Another in a Long Line of, "Is it just me?" Posts

I know that I have a history of playing a curmudgeon up here and on RYS, but really, I'm a pretty decent fellow. My student evals tend to be quite good--"stellar" was once used by a former department chair--and the word on the street tends to be that I work well with students. I submit this context to you just to make it clear that I'm not always an enormous asshole.

"You've made it!
You've made it to
your appointment!"

Nevertheless, here I am, feeling like I'm an enormous asshole.

I work full time in what I'll call an academic resource center at a fairly large university (my teaching gigs are, of course, adjunct ones). For the most part, I work with students who are underperforming academically and who are in need of "support." Primarily, I work with students on their writing.

My position essentially requires me to hold 40 office hours a week, during which students can schedule hourly appointments with me to discuss whatever academic concerns they are shouldering at the moment. Some students meet with me weekly. Some merely drop in when needed. Some students make excellent use of the resource and get themselves out of trouble. Some students simply use the resource as a way to feign productivity. It is this last population that concerns me today.

It is often the case that my office sees students on a very regular basis, because many of those students are always in academic distress. Therefore, I know many of the students who come through my office door quite well. Almost inevitably, the students who are largely nonfunctional, and therefore barely deserve to be called "students," either cancel or miss their appointments with me with great regularity. Given that our office operates on the premise of unconditional support, there's no way that we can call out these students on that kind of behavior--even though it wastes countless hours of staff time. As of just a few years ago, I was not on Facebook. Now, it's the only thing to keep me occupied when I wait, wait, wait . . . wait, wait . . . wait, and wait some more . . . and some more . . . for my students not to arrive for their appointments. Because when I wait a mere few minutes for them to arrive, and then begin doing actual meaningful work on the assumption that they won't arrive, they, of course, do arrive--10-30 minutes late. Maddening, it is.

So, when do these nonfucntional students want to meet with me? When have they finally gotten their acts together and are finally ready to do work? When have they finally reached levels of self-actualization that allow them to see that carrying around four incompletes from two semesters ago is not going to end well? You guessed it: Spring Fucking Break.

As a "staff" member, I have to report to work during break time. Sure, I could use vacation days to avoid being in work when there aren't any students around, but that seems to undermine the point of taking vacation time. So here I am. On Spring Break, being forced to meet with these students.

And here is where I feel like an asshole. Every time one of these students calls to schedule an appointment with me, I seethe in anger, because I can't help but feel that they're full of shit: "Oh, now, after skipping your last five appointments during the actual semester, you're ready to meet with me . . . during the time when you, and I, should be elsewhere doing other things." Please.

At best, that kind of behavior, from what I've seen, just provides these students the illusion of productivity. They can feel that they are actually doing their work when, if they were actually doing their work, they wouldn't need to meet with me during their respective breaks, because they wouldn't be behind in the first place. To boot, meeting with me during Spring Break fosters this sense that they're all self-sacrificing martyrs who are working oh-so-hard but yet all those mean professors just won't extend their due dates by another six months or so.

Inside, I'm troubled that I feel this way. I know that some students actually do make use of the break time to get caught up, because some of those students get into sticky academic situations for legitimate reasons.

Nevertheless, I can't stand to feel like I'm being manipulated, which is precisely what will happen. In a few weeks, I'll likely be CC'd on an email from one of these students to a professor. I will not have asked to be CC'd on this email, nor will I have ever suggested that I should be CC'd on any student emails. This email will inform the professor that the student has been working really hard, and, as Dr. Nothaughty can attest, even met with him at the Academic Resource Center during Spring Break. Therefore, can't the professor in question just extend the deadline until the end of the semester? If the professor needs any clarification about any of this, he can feel free to contact Dr. Nothaughty.

By the time I read to the conclusion of this intrusive, inappropriate email, the professor will already have responded, of course keeping me CC'd on this correspondence that will likely keep me up at night.

The professor--because our university has absolutely shit academic standards--will agree just to give the student an incomplete for the term, provided that the student in question continues to meet with Dr. Nothaughty.

The student will respond thusly: Thanks :-)

The student will then schedule a series of appointments with me, most of which won't be kept.

Know which ones will be kept?

The ones during Summer Fucking Break.