Thanks to the Cheeseburger Networks:
Just Kill Me!
"Today, I woke up to check my final grades for my HIST 341 course I took. Expecting a B- or lower, I ended up with an A-! Knowing that my papers are worth almost graduate level work really MMD!"
Since when is A- "almost graduate level" work? Does that mean an A is "graduate level" work?
Considering that most of my students are laboring under the (false) assumption that "showing up" means "at least an A-" then apparently grad school is just about attendance.
ReplyDeleteI swore I would abandon the lead-weighted pool cue, but dammit, this kid is too much....
ReplyDeleteI just can't determine what bothers me the most: the student's expectations being so wrong, the student's associations of A minus word with graduate-level, OR the student's surprise and delight about a grade in junior-level class only lasting a day (if MMD means made my day)
ReplyDeleteI wonder if this is a case where someone told McFlakeyPaints that a B was a failing grade in a graduate class and she just assumed an undergrad A and a graduate A were the same thing. After all they're As.
ReplyDeleteThere's more to the story. According to their later comment, "at my school 400 starts pre-grad work (assuming that you’re planning to go into that part of your higher education) [sic]" Which means Snowyflakee thinks that an A- in a "pre-pre-grad" course is equal to an A in an actual graduate-level class.
ReplyDeleteSomeone's in for a surprise. Delusions of snowflake grandeur, anyone?
Not so fast folks ...
ReplyDeleteIn the start of my actual graduate level classes, I have students flaking out saying they cannot understand an introductory assignment to find/summarize/analyze a selection of journal articles.
Or those claiming they cannot "figure out" how to use Turnitin. (NB: This program has a integrated access to Turnitin. Click on the link in the courseroom and it automatically logs you into the appropriate Turnitin class section.) These students are basically saying: 1) They haven't mastered the advanced computer skill of uploading a file; and/or 2) they can't be bothered to actually click a link and spend a few moments orienting themselves to a university-wide service.
Or the temper tantrums over having "flunked" them because I had the audacity to post grades for discussion questions (which were actually due mid-week) before the responses were due (at the end of the week).
But ... remember, we can't say what we'd like to say for fear of harming the little darlings' self-esteem!
Or ...
ReplyDeleteHow about the EMail I just got from a graduate student who feels the university might not be a good match -- because the student's writing isn't very good?
While there certainly can be a discussion about the diminishing standards for admission to college/graduate school, to then suggest the university is not a "good fit" when by the student's own admission "my writing doesn't meet the standards for these courses"??
WTF?
@Aware: Not a good fit, eh? Now there's a way to duck responsibility. Right up there with, "What I'm saying is . . . " But I don't think this is new.
ReplyDeleteFor my first T.A. gig in grad school eons ago, I was one of three T.A.s for a very large introductory lecture class. The prof had students reading a few seminal original papers in the field and asked each T.A. to submit a few exam questions (probably to check whether we understood the papers). "Jessie" objected to my questions because they had straightforward answers and didn't allow students any wiggle room. The prof pointed out that there was no other correct interpretation of that really famous, game-changing paper in our field. Jessie replied, "What I'm saying is that people can have different constructions of the reality the author is perceiving."
I avoided catching the prof's eye. Captain Subtext, had he been around back then, would have translated this as, "I don't get this, and I don't have to as long as I throw post-modern jargon around."
My question was used on the exam. Jessie didn't finish the program.