Dean Suzy supposes she needs to write something to justify her authorship rights. Today was a day chock-full of dean-ness. And I seem to be coming down with the flu. After a day full of professors sending nasty emails to my crew, some lawyer threatening something, finally getting 250 Christmas cards signed, dealing with late stuff and diverse other headaches, I had my weekly open office hours for whoever needs my ear.
Among the visitors was a thirty-ish MBA student. For some bizarre reason, I have an MBA program in my faculty, they stick out like a sore thumb. I mean, the clothes (he was wearing Armani, or at least that's what the T-shirt said), the swagger, the manner - you can smell them from far off.
He has a long, complicated sob story about why he is not finished his thesis work yet. Something about a bad back, grandmother's death, divorce, yadda yadda. Who was saying that grad students are different? Anyway, he paid his tuition for the thesis credits and didn't hand in but he wants a new chance for this great new topic with a tuition discount. Oh, how lucky I am that I am in no position to offer such a thing! I offer sympathy and the telephone number of the hard-as-nails registrar.
And his new thesis topic that he is proposing is something or other in a field I know nothing about and he's like me to champion it for him. I try to break the news that I have no knowledge of these kinds of baskets. But see, he's going to make a million on this, with all the buzzwords he can apply to what he's doing. And I could be on the board of the company he's going to form. It will look really good if a dean backs his company. Especially if the dean is me because people know me and all. And he's having trouble getting professors from his program to sign on.
Sure. 'Cause I only back stuff I do myself or people I know and trust are doing. I back people who weave solid baskets, not smoke ones. None of these people wear Armani shirts. He insisted on another date to pitch his topic to me again. I only have time during open office hours, as I have my calendar booked solid until September 2012. So he'll be back the first week of the year.
Would anyone like to buy a used MBA program? These are 5% of my people and they take 25% of my time.
You know all those nasty things I talk about when speaking about students? Do all of them to this guy, while playing the entire discography of the Pixies.
ReplyDeletePixies? Mean. Meeeeean.
ReplyDeleteDean Suzy, it's nice to see you back. It helps me hate my admins more when I see the flakery from your department.
In business everything's a negotiation right? I hate B-School Beyotches.
ReplyDeleteArchie, chill - from my reading of posts here, students from all disciplines will attempt to negotiate. Business students are by no means unique in this.
ReplyDelete@Archie & Pangloss: I admit that I've avoided teaching Business Writing precisely because I'm afraid that business students will be even more inclined to argue/negotiate about grades than the students I already have. But I could be wrong about that.
ReplyDelete@Suzie: this story makes me think "Narcissistic Personality Disorder," or some not-quite-pathological relative thereto. Whosever idea the divorce was, I suspect his former spouse is better off. Now if you can only figure out how to do the same. Any chance he plagiarizes? Running his "business plan" (if and when he gets around to actually writing it down) through a plagiarism detector might yield useful results.