Instant Gratification

Dear Jury-Duty Judy,

This email is in response to your email time stamped 5:45PM, a time at which I was in class, your email time stamped 6:11PM, a time at which I was still in class, your email time stamped 6:42PM, a time at which I was STILL in class, your email time stamped 7:20PM, the time at which I had just left class to get in my car and drive home, your email time stamped 7:35PM, a time at which I was still in my car on my way home, and your email time stamped 7:54PM, a time at which I was home, yet was in the middle of eating a light dinner.

Now that I have finally been able to read through the body of your original email, I am prepared to give an official response. First, there is no way that failing the summer class in which you were enrolled could have been a surprise to you, especially since I told you so prior to the end of the summer term. You said to my Dean that I told you . . . wait a minute. Is that ANOTHER email? At 8:09PM? What the hell is wrong with you? Seven emails in less than 3 hours. Have you ever heard of server lag? Or a Schedule of Classes? Or even dinner?

As I was saying, your grade shouldn’t have been a surprise. Your average exam score on 5 exams was 53.2%. The idea that I told you that you were still “OK”, as you told my Dean, is beyond laughable. I happen to recall that any conversation that we had on the topic was with respect to being able to complete your work prior to the deadline. I also recall that I told you that strictly by the numbers you couldn’t pass the class, but since you were “close” (alright, I didn’t give you air quotes; you were close-ish) you would earn a passing grade if you could earn a 95% or above on the final exam. Based on past experience, I knew this to be virtually impossible. You on the other hand seemed to think . . . are you fucking kidding me? It’s not even 8:15 yet! If I thought you were clever enough, I would say that you are doing this as an attempt to throw me off from what you must know to be my overall response to your request.

Back to your request. No, I will not change your grade from a D to a C. If anything, I will change it from a D to an F. You earned a score of 27.3% on the final exam. Your overall score in the class, including homework and quizzes, was a 51.8%. I lowered the lower limit for a D, for some reason unbeknownst to me. I already discussed this with my Dean prior to your meeting with him. By chance, I happened near his office when he arrived on campus that morning and, when asked, I explained the entire situation to him. Fortunately, he is one to back up his faculty, especially in the face of overwhelming evidence against the student’s claims. I know for a fact that he told you that the first step was to take the issue up with me, as outlined in the Catalog, something you didn’t do prior to your meeting with him. I’m telling you now that this is not something that you should have waited to . . . OK, now this is just getting ridiculous. 8:27PM. Nine emails. On average, an email every 18 minutes.

I don’t quite understand your current need for instant gratification. You waited almost 6 weeks before even attempting to contact my Dean. I emailed everyone in this summer’s class 6 hours after the final was taken with notification about grades being posted. It can’t be because you “needed” my class and “need” the next class this term in order to be “on pace” to transfer after the Spring. The first time you mentioned this to me, I told you that your expectations were highly unrealistic, mostly due to scheduling. As the summer progressed, I told you that your expectations were unrealistic due to your total lack of understanding of the material. Yet, for some reason, you still persevered. Normally I would laud your tenacity but for . . . as expected, right on schedule. 8:45PM. If you had just been this tenacious about your study habits, you would have passed on your own merits.

To summarize, no, I will not change your grade.

If I may, let me give you a little advice about email etiquette in situations such as this. If you’re going to hound a professor every time you earn (and I emphasize EARN) a substandard grade, don’t just forward the email that you sent to said professor and CC’d to yourself and said professor's Dean, especially if you’re going to CC the Dean EVERY TIME. Based on experience, I know my Dean's evening email schedule rather well and expect him to send me a “WTF” . . . right . . . about . . . now. OK, he’s a little late. He must have been caught up in traff . . . oh, there it is.

PfP
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Associate Professor Pat from Peoria
Department of Who Gives a Fuck
Community College of the State of Denial
patfrompeoria@ccsod.edu.com.org.us.ca.uk
(976) 555 – 0000
-------------------------------------------------------------------