SillyCynthia: We’ve had 3 assignments which I’ve graded and handed back to you since I gave you your grade at midterm – why, oh, why can’t you figure out what your current grade is? But I need to know so I can figure out what I need to get on the final to get X grade in the class.
How does this even work? I need a 72 on the final, so I’ll just study until I get to that point??? How do you know when you’ve reached your threshold? I don’t get it!!! Why don’t you just try to do your best...and no I can’t send you a link to download the film we watched.
Justdoesn’tgetitJustine: Here’s my paper. Halfway through I realized I didn’t do the assignment you asked for, but this is waaaaay better because it’s really long, and if you just want what you asked for, just ignore the first 2 pages.
Er, uh, um, since you’ve realized that, could you just send me the correct version? Because that’s what I want to grade, and realizing you’ve done something wrong and NOT correcting it does not make you look, um, smart. Soooo that’s why I told you to just read the part that is right.
NO. Just correct it and turn in the correct version or expect to lose points. I just want to voice my opinion – my bad. Just skim that as well.
(Jaw drops) Could you please stop telling me how to grade your paper? Could you just turn in the assignment that I asked you to do? I gave you simple instructions, and I thought you might want to do some extra reading, but I guess you’re turned off by anything positive. Whatever.
(Steam coming out of ears) I gave YOU simple instructions, too. No, I don’t want to do extra work. “Whatever,” right back atcha! Please stop emailing me. Just come to my office or go complain to my dept head. I should also mention I’ve fielded about 100 emails from this gem this semester. Long emails. Loooooong. Rife with emoticons, occasionally youtube links. The first time she made my jaw drop was when she said, “I’m the only white person at my job,” sort of out of nowhere. I guess the look on my face clued her in to my shock and she followed up with, “...well I guess that doesn’t matter or whatever.”
ConfusedChris: As it says on the syllabus, I cannot accept this assignment late. But you said it was due yesterday.
It was. Yesterday during class – not at 10PM. This assignment isn’t accepted late since it was assigned on the first day of class. But I was busy and I forgot to do it on Tuesday.
Right...and you didn’t turn it in during class on Wednesday because of what? I had a class after. I really need the points.
That doesn’t make sense. The assignment sheet says I have until the last day of class.
Yeah...that was the last day of class. WTF is wrong with you?! Well, the sheet doesn’t have the specific date on it, so I’m still confused, and if you don’t accept this I’ll probably get a bad grade.
Well, the syllabus does. And we went over it in class...ohhhh, but you never come to class, so maybe that explains it. Can you tell me my current grade?
And we come full circle: We’ve had 3 assignments which I’ve graded and handed back to you since I gave you your grade at midterm – why, oh, why can’t you figure out what your current grade is?
I love you, Prof. Terguson.
ReplyDeleteTerguson, you any relation to General Buck "mineshaft gap" Turgidson?
ReplyDeleteZoiks. This post makes me eternally grateful that our LMS has a function whereby their grades are automatically updated as soon as I enter new grades for assignments. I have learned to keep things "invisible" and out of the final total though until I have all of them entered--because when I forget to do that, I am deluged with "Why am I getting an F?" emails; they're not Fs, I just haven't entered the grade yet.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I've had two conversations in the past week and a half with students who are guilty of "magical thinking"--that even with 50 or 80 or 100 point holes in my gradebook, they thought they might be able to pass. Nope. I do not take any pleasure in those conversations, and nothing would make me happier than to have the flakes just melt away (like 5 or 6 others so far this semester) instead of coming to my office to ask "What can 'we' do about my grade?" "We" can't do anything, because I can't grade non-existent papers. UGH.
Love this post...
ReplyDeleteI refuse to use the gradebook associated with our unpleasant LMS because it is a prickly beast that is not at all easy or time-efficient to use. I use a third party program and send reports to students periodically when I update grades or when they ask for one. Yea, batch emails.
ReplyDeleteI also refuse to answer the "what do I need on X assignment in order to get Y grade" question. If asked, I direct them to their own mathematical genius as a way to determine that answer.
The coddling has to stop somewhere.
If I didn't know better, I'd swear you just hacked into and read my email, Terguson. It's scary how common this kind of nonsense is.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite answer to the question from a semester-long slacker snowflake who is failing, who should have dropped, "What can I do to get a better grade/pass the class?" GET A TIME MACHINE!
ReplyDelete@Liz "The coddling has to stop somewhere."
ReplyDeleteOh, how I love this! It's a corollary to "Don't care more about their education than they do."
The coddling should have stopped after middle school, where they should have begun phasing it out.
Post of the Week.
ReplyDeleteTwo such whiners came by my office hours during the last week of classes. One kept "explaining" why his term paper grade was low, and how he thought he was following the directions. I helpfully pulled out a syllabus and turned on the supporting website and asked, with concern, "which information here should I change so that students will understand it better next time?" Amazingly, it was clear when he actually read it.
The other had SillyCynthia's question: what do I need to do on the final exam in order to pass? I asked her Prof. T's question about how that worked, and all I could figure out was that it was some comfort to her that she needed to get "only" a B+.
When I pointed out that almost every assignment and exam so far in the class had been a low D, and that she was now closer to a C only because of extra credit (incentive for seeking out campus tutoring), she said her grades had been "a bit low" because "Hamster Weaving was hard for me."
Sorry, I said, 57% and 62% on exams? "A bit low?"
But I loved how it was the fault of the class for being hard for her.
I talked to a math instrutor at my school over the weekend. She was telling stories about students that needed help determining their grade for the semester.
ReplyDeleteShe wanted to tell them, "If you can't calculate your grade, see you next semester!" She couldn't really say that, though, because she teaches our lowest-level remedial math. If they could figure out their grade, they wouldn't be there to begin with.