Dear Professor Monkey,
I was write to you about my condition. I was in Iraq and hit real hard. I will probably not walk again. Bullets hit my hip. But worst, a explosion hit my jeep and I suffer brain trauma injury. I been reading you're response to my work and I want to talk. See I go to school not for a job or training. I am training my brain again. I know you can't understand this in a million years, but I am learning for the sake of learning and not for grades or degrees or promotions. So now you know even if you can never understand my situation.
[unsigned]
* * *
Where to start?
* So sad to hear about this accident. I know having to re-train yourself and face the challenge of perhaps never walking again can be devastating for a young man. Kudos to you for deciding to go back to school. We can work together on developing your writing and reading skills.
* I'm glad you see college as a way to learn and re-train your brain, rather than an entitled ticket to a higher pay scale. This is how students ought to see college, but many do not.
* Unfortunately, I do not intend to give you higher grades because of your injury.
* You rather obnoxiously state that I could never understand your situation, not in a million years. Oh, precious snowflake. I have struggled with my own head injury for over 20 years. I was struck in the head in the communication area above the left temple. In a nanosecond, I forgot how words sounded. I lost the ability to read. I went through years of therapy to learn how to read and understand people again. Then, I embraced schooling and made myself better precisely because of this injury. I worked my way through college and went to a top ten grad school. I know exactly what you are going through, minus the bullets in your hip. If anyone is in a position to understand, it is me.
* And as someone who understands, I must give you this advice: OWN YOUR CONDITION. Your condition is not an excuse to make others change on your behalf. It is something that you must use as a motivating force to make you a better person. Understand your different learning styles, your unique situation, and let it drive you to develop strategies. Not excuses.
* Training your brain will involve struggling to read and struggling to write. Yet these struggles will make you stronger. You will be able to do it more and more easily as you practice. But for that, you will indeed actually need to practice. To do the work. To write. To read.
* If you are taking classes to improve yourself, especially in this condition, you need to read my feedback. You see where I said "This has been plagiarized, 100% from Wikipedia...."? That is not learning. That is copy and paste.
* Remember that note you got from the Dean after your second offense of plagiarism? Oh, you know, the note that prompted this excuse-laden email about how I could never understand in a million years how you are going to college to learn and not to get the degree? That should have been a sign for you to start learning. Read the assigned material.
* So, snowflake: why did you just turn in ANOTHER plagiarized paper? You are now failing the course automatically and being put on 6 months' probation. And after we worked together to ensure you understood what plagiarism is and what is expected of you, too.
What a shame.
First of all, your struggles with a brain injury probably lead you to being even more empathetic of students who do struggle, but that's not to say that all professors don't have SOMETHING they can empathize with. Students seem think we are a completely different species (and sometimes, I feel similarly). It's not like WE ever went through years and years of college or ever had relatives die in the midst of deadlines, or had illnesses that incapacitated us, or suffered from crippling depression that led to near-suicidal angst, or had budget cuts leading to less income to support our families. We are professors, not human beings.
ReplyDeleteI want to post this: "Your condition is not an excuse to make others change on your behalf. It is something that you must use as a motivating force to make you a better person. Understand your different learning styles, your unique situation, and let it drive you to develop strategies. Not excuses" in my syllabus!
Too bad the email wasn't plagiarized. It might have made more sense.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your frustration about the "you can't understand" thing. It seems that part of the rampant snowflake/narcissism syndrome in our culture is a sense that one's experiences are unique and that nobody else can see what they're like. But really, humans are a social species and part of our brain chemistry includes the ability to empathize with other humans and the ability to imagine. So we can totally understand what something is like without ever having gone through it.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the mini-rant; that's one of my push-button areas. ;)
This comment by students yanks my chain too. I've frequently been told that I have no idea what XXX is like. I then remind them that they are not the first people to walk the planet and that the world did not start to revolve around them when they were born.
ReplyDeleteThe frequency of these comments led me to give a disclaimer when we talk about sensitive issues in my classes. I remind them that, for instance, statistically speaking, 5 of the women in the class have been victims of domestic abuse, 3 have been raped, someone has lost a loved one to murder, etc. That seems to have helped with the types of comments that are made during discussions.
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ReplyDeleteI like Suzy's boilerplate. If the issue were just grades, not repeated plagiarism, I'd vote for considering sharing a bit of your own experience, because it could be useful, both as encouragement and as a reminder that veterans, though they certainly deserve respect for how they came to be injured, are not the only ones who cope with disability. But the plagiarism combined with the "I'm so unique you can't possibly understand me" pushes this over into snowflake/narcissist territory, no matter how the student served, or was injured. After all, though it's not particularly snowflake-friendly territory, there are less-than-admirable/healthy reasons for joining the military, too (and probably all the more so now that it's harder to find volunteers). Also, as I'm sure you're aware, brain injuries can alter personality, and, for better or for worse, both you and the student are dealing with the personality he has now, which may be subtly or drastically different from the one that led him to serve. It's easy to see how a combination of frustration and lack of impulse control could lead to plagiarism, but, as you point out, such behavior robs him of the benefit he's trying to get. In the larger scheme of things, it's your job to hold the line on what is and isn't appropriate behavior; leave it to the student's counselors, family, etc. to help him cope with the fallout of his bad choices, injury-related or not. Maybe college isn't the best form of therapy for him right now, and suspension will lead everyone involved to rethink his treatment program.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, the situation is very, very sad, and hard on all involved.
Oops; Suzy removed her boilerplate. I hope she'll repost it; it was good -- something along the lines of "I'm concerned and sympathetic, but in fairness to everyone in the class, I have to apply grading standards uniformly."
ReplyDeleteYes, sorry. I deleted when I googled a verbatim & realized an identity could be revealed. Not a big deal but student privacy is the issue.
ReplyDeleteBasically, a master teacher (what ever that is, but he was) told me to convey these three things:
1) I am concerned about you, and I want you to do well.
2) I want you to feel that you can speak freely with me.
3) BUT. As a matter of fairness to all students, I do not adjust grades (criteria, assignments, extra credit, whatever) due to factors outside the classroom.
Students who need help, whether that's due to health or substance abuse, can be referred to the appropriate resource on via 1:1 talks. But, if we're putting things in writing, a message that is short, sweet, & generic is best.