Twelve

The place on a college campus where you can find the highest concentration of laziness, stupidity, and cluelessness isn’t in the president’s office, or the dean’s office, or the office of that old tenured guy that’s using the same notes to teach Paradise Lost as he did in 1972.  The place on a college campus where you can find the highest concentration laziness, stupidity, and cluelessness isn’t really a “place” at all.  It’s the roster of a core course taught online.  I won’t go into detail why.  Because we all know why. 

I have been teaching core courses online for years.  Years.  And over that time I have come to realize that the bells and whistles of the online experience—all the things that multitasking millenials love—the journals, the discussion boards, the lecture captures, the blogs, the chats, the videos, the powerpoint slides, etc.—are useless.  They are less than useless because they are distractions from real thought.  In fact, those useless distractions are the prime reason why many of them cannot think, even when they try.

So, here is what my students are dealing with in my online class.  Or rather, attempting not to deal with.  Every week they are given a bunch of shit to read.  Not only primary shit, but secondary shit that illuminates and comments on the primary shit, often from different perspectives.  The online course requires nine full hours of their time per week, spent in a place free from distractions.  Nine. Full. Hours.  Six to seven of those hours need to be spent reading the aforementioned primary and secondary shit, and taking careful notes.  Two to three of those hours need to be spent writing an essay in response to a prompt on that primary and secondary shit. 

I am available to discuss these primary and secondary sources with them, via phone, email, or an office visit, of which I often remind them.  The fact that they will not attempt to contact me is no skin of my professorial nose.  I’d personally prefer it if they didn’t, because then I can use my office hours to nap or gossip with my best friend about that lady at our church with the bad dye job that keeps thinking up more shit for us to do.  (I hate you, lady at our church with the bad dye job that keeps thinking up more shit for us to do.) But I’m there for the students in my online class.  I’m there for them.  They ignore me at their peril, but I am there for them. 

And many of them indeed are in great peril, because the essay on that primary and secondary shit will be judged on their ability to directly address the prompt.  To do this they not only need to be very familiar with the primary and secondary shit, but they will actually need to read the prompt and pay attention to it.  They don’t want to do either of these things.  They want to summarize some bullshit they read on the internet. 

But my questions cannot be answered by summarizing some bullshit they read on the internet, and if they do, even if I cannot accuse them of plagiarism because they have been clever little fucks about their thievery, I will still fail their sorry asses for not answering the fucking question.

Here is a handy list on what their grade is also NOT based on: 

• Facebook posts on the primary source
• Solipsistic musings in their journals on the primary source
• Their opinion on whether or not they would date the main character in the primary source
• Tweets from Starbucks on what they’re drinking while they’re “reading” the primary source
• Their BFF’s opinions on the movie based on the primary source
• Their poetry slam open-mike performance on the primary source 
• Their invention of a role-playing game based on the primary source
• Etc. etc. etc.

 They are not judged on anything they write about their twee little millennial imaginings, for which I have no regard whatsoever.  They are judged, purely, on their ability to interact with the texts and their ability to coherently address the question in essay form.  They do not want to do this.  It is too hard.  It requires thought.  Long periods of deep thought. And for weeks, most of them go through an unimaginable series of contortions to avoid this. 

But the day comes—it always does—that separates the men from the boys.  In the semester calendar this day is the last date to drop without receiving a WP or a WF.  They are made to understand from the beginning that I do not hand out WPs unless a student’s average is above passing, so a student that remains on my roster after that day knows they cannot easily escape.  They must think, or fail.  Think, or fail. 

Well, for this semester, that day recently passed. On the morning after, I checked the roster for my online core class, to see which names remained.  The class had begun in August with a full enrollment of thirty, and more wanting to get in.  But by the morning after the last day to drop it had shrunk from that maximum of thirty to…(drumroll please)…

Twelve.  Twelve brave souls.  Or twelve foolish ones. 

It’s too early to tell.