"Trees felled by a freak tornado blocked my commuting route today, and then demented mimes came out of nowhere and boxed me into my parking spot (I couldn't break through their invisible glass), so I couldn't get to class. Is there a note taker in the class who can send me typed notes? I'll be LOST without them!"
"I had to have emergency brain surgery yesterday but I'm all better now. Will you post notes online for what I missed?"
"My family forced me to go on vacation in the middle of the term, so I had to skip two weeks of class. Any chance of getting those notes? I'll DIE without them."
Notes. Notes. NOTES. Is this frenzy over "notes" happening to you, too? This desperate and at times nearly insane demand for the sacred keys called "notes"? Without which the course material is nothing but one maliciously contrived riddle after another?
Hmmm, let's see. They could try, dunno, reading the assigned material? Maybe even spending two paltry minutes doing a bit of online research beyond the book, in between multiple FB checks and porno breaks? Preparing specific questions on the material to show remorse and then making an appointment to see me in penance? Asking a classmate what we covered? Or doing the best thing and building a time machine and going back in time to the missed class and making sure never to miss class again as attendance is a solemn obligation according to my law? But, no, it has to be the Holy Notes, without which the entire cosmos is just a heap of cold unintelligibility.
Whence this helplessness concerning and distortion of the nature of the scholarly enterprise, and one's role as an accountable agent?
(The line about "the class note taker" is a real line from a real student. What class note taker? As though I have a hunchbacked medieval scribe I drive into the classroom every day with a flog so he can prepare the Divine Communion of Notes or Divina Signa for the convenience of all truants.)
I'm dating myself, but do you remember when Spiro Agnew called the press, "the nattering nabobs of negativity"? For a moment I paused, to say, "WHAT?!" I simply could not believe my ears. I then fell off the chair, laughing. Spiro had that effect, more than once.
ReplyDeleteAnd at least you have creative nincompoops! Mine are so boring, with such unimaginative excuses. I'd tell yours to imagine just exactly how they will die, since they ought to have made arrangements for notes in advance, the way responsible adults do. Seriously: tell them to get yours from another student, since I am not required to give you mine.
The helplessness had roots in the grade inflation of the Vietnam war, when a D could quite literally mean death. It got worse around 1990, when the demographics of the transition from the Baby Boom to the far less populous Generation X made university administrators eager to fill empty classroom seats, and so widely accept the idea of students as "customers." Read "Generation X Goes to College," by Peter Sachs: it was published in 1996, but it could very well describe today.
It's gotten really fierce since then. The generation for whom all those "Baby on Board" signs we started seeing in the '80s have come to college, having been doted upon incessantly every minute of their chronically overstimulated, overscheduled lives by their helicopter parents. Be kind to Eyegor: his grandfather used to work for my grandfather, and the rates have gone up.
That's Peter Sacks, not Peter Sachs. The book is well worth reading, at least the first nine chapters.
DeleteI have this little thingie on my syllabus, up top: Name of peer resource, phone, e-mail, etc. I tell them their peer resource is where they go for notes, missed handouts, questions about missed classes, and questions that may be answerable by reading the syllabus.
ReplyDeleteIt cuts down considerably on the crap, though sadly, does not eliminate it entirely.
You assign a student to them to be their note taker, or they pick one themselves?
DeleteOS: 'The line about "the class note taker" is a real line from a real student. What class note taker?'
DeleteOur DSS office will assign note-takers should a student's disability merit one. I once had a student who took full advantage of hir note-taker -- skipping classes all together. I called DSS on that one.
Futzmonster, the assumption here is that everyone is taking notes. So you contact your peer resource and say, "Can I copy your notes from the class I missed?"
DeletePerhaps that is too old-school for this generation, but whatever. The point is that it is not my responsibility to give them material they missed.
Confession: as an undergraduate in the early 2000s, I did this, too. Once.
ReplyDeleteIt was my first semester and for some legitimate reason or other, I had to miss a class. Hating that I would miss the professor's lecture and knowing that he actually had a written copy of his lecture (on yellowing paper, I might add) from which he daily read, I asked if I could read it when I got back.
I was told in no uncertain terms that That Simply Was Not Done - and I understand his reasoning much better now than I did then - but at the time, my logic had been: I'm can't be there for the professor's lecture, but he's written his lecture out beforehand. Why ask another student for *their* version of what he said, when I can just get it straight from the source and cut out the chance for misinterpretation, omission, etc.?
It turns out that there are plenty of good reasons why not. My point is that I was not asking out of laziness, or some sense of entitlement, or an impression that I was a consumer and I Pay Your Salary, Dammit! I was a naive kid who just wanted the closest approximation to having been in class on one of the few occasions that I couldn't make it in. Maybe some of your students are the same way.
Then again, they could just be whiny little shits.
Notes? When a students asks me for copies of my notes I tell them I have a Ph.D. in this subject, have studied it for almost 40 years, and the day I need notes is the day I retire. Notes? phhhhhtttttttt.
ReplyDeleteI don't have notes, either. But I'm thinking maybe I should have notes. And if I make them available and tell students not to come to class, wouldn't that just make my life that much easier?
DeleteIsn`t that the basic idea of online learningÉ
DeleteWhen I taught in my old area, my notes were scribbled in the margins of whatever work we were studying. My teaching plan for the lecture consisted of "Cinderella myth vs. Jane Austen."
ReplyDeleteNow, I teach in a college that requires PPT, which I post to BB the evening before the lecture (although one student complained in evals that I should post them earlier -- around suppertime). Still, students ask for my notes.
At least your students take notes. I have to start class with, "you might want to write this down".
ReplyDeleteI read an anecdote once about a student in a course on classical civilization, taught by an old and extremely knowledgeable professor. Said student had to miss class, and knowing that the prof lectured from notes, he asked to see them. The professor smiled and handed him his notes for the day's lecture, which read, in their entirety:
ReplyDeleteZEUS
ATHENA
ZEUS
Even if you can get 'em, it doesn't always help. . .