They are not stupidlike some students.
In fact, they had
hoodwinked
me earlier.I would see their names
on my roll and I would think,
"On to the next level,
all of them."
And then the final came,
the confirmation dance,
the last assurance that they were ready,
able to shoot forward in the program.
But not now.
These deplorable pages
spill like leaves
on my table.
Ugliness.
What had been learned
seems to have vanished.
They are mathematically exempt,
enough points to pass.
But this last test, the last hurdle
convinces me they're not.
My roast pork sandwich
tastes like defeat.
This is priceless. I laughed until my stomach hurt. Now I feel I have the energy to submit the last batch of my final grades and finally be done with this endless semester.
ReplyDeleteThe more they seem to have learned, the greater license they have to forget.
ReplyDeleteTingle, my brother. What is it with you and the food? If you turn to it every time you have a disappointment, you'll have a belly like mine.
ReplyDeleteI HATE that moment. I get a feel for the student's worth from a semester's worth of work. And then in 2 hours they blow it. For some of them, I wish they'd stayed in bed, got a flat tire, anything. Anything but showing up, blowing the final and making me wonder..."Can they? Should they?"
ReplyDeleteThe flunkers are easy. It's the "passing fancy" group that torment me, too.
Richard, I have those ugly things on my table at home, too... I stare at them and wonder, "Where did it all go wrong?"
ReplyDeletehongry.
ReplyDeleteWhen I lived in Philadelphia, A pork sandwich with broccoli rabe Tony Luke's (the Oregon Avenue original, not the bogus Center City extension) was my favorite vice. A frozen, microwaved version? That must surely taste of defeat!
ReplyDeleteIt can happen in classes with final papers, too. Early in the semester, one of my students proposed a project which involved interviewing women who had grown up in his parents' home country, which has been in the news lately, to see if their experience matched the media stereotypes. We had a productive exchange about the possible biases in a sample made up of emigres of his own or his parents' acquaintance, and he wrote a solid proposal which took those issues into account. I have to admit that I'd forgotten about the project, since he never completed a draft. But when I went back, after discovering I didn't have a final paper from him, to figure out when and what I'd last heard from him, I was reminded that I was looking forward to reading his paper. Instead, I ended up entering one of those "haven't seen him since [fill in date]" grades which is equivalent to an F. Discouraging, but I usually get at least one case like this per semester, and sometimes more.
ReplyDelete