1. As soon as you finish your syllabus and send it off to the printer (or post it to the web), you will receive an email from the Provost alerting you to 6 things you absolutely must include in your syllabi, 3 of them entirely new. This email will also include a reminder of the quasi-contractual nature of the syllabus (which presumably suggests the inadvisability of having multiple versions of the document floating around). Once you have added the three things and sent off the new version, you will receive an email from the Dean, then your department chair, then your program coordinator, then the counseling service. . . .
2. The student you finally decide, after due consideration of various compelling stories, to add to your class despite the fact that it is already full, will turn out to be the most high-maintenance student you have all semester (actually, this is not so much a corollary to Murphy's Law as a mistake resulting from failure to extrapolate from the available evidence; students who have long, complicated explanations for why they're currently in crisis often turn out to be continually in crisis, and often keep offering long, complicated explanations for said crises).
I'm very reluctant to add seniors who didn't get into a class, no matter how much they beg. Since they get to enroll first, not getting into a class that they now claim they desperately need means that they were (and probably still are) not on the ball. It has also been my experience that these are the flakiest students.
ReplyDeleteI had a student today mention an ongoing family crisis as a reason she missed class. She gave no details and we had a perfectly professional discussion about missed work. I wanted to hug her.
ReplyDelete@Addled: agreed. I teach a class that is required for graduation, and that students are supposed to take more or less at the beginning of their junior years. Seniors who not only haven't completed the requirement, but also haven't used their priority registration to snag a seat during their last semester, tend to be very bad news.
ReplyDelete@Isis: I'd want to hug her, too. Strange how a "perfectly professional" discussion can bring out an unprofessional affection for the student who initiates it, isn't it? The TMI folks could learn something about the effectiveness of reticence, though of course it's the taking-responsibility-for-a-solution part that really warms the cockles.