Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Not So Speedy Rant

It's bad enough, dealing with the flood of emails from students who "can't make it to class because it's Thanksgiving! Tomorrow!" And they must travel over the river and through the woods to some elderly relative's house, so they had to leave yesterday. Will they miss anything? Yes. You will miss something. The entire class that I am teaching because our campus is not closed today. But WTF? There are tea partying professors in several departments across campus who have cancelled classes for the day. Not all of them travel. A couple said "what's the point? The students don't want to be here, so I'll stay home and bake pies." How stupid am I? I'll be baking until midnight.

18 comments:

  1. If the college closed on Wednesday because so many people skip classes for travel or baking pies, then the absences would start on Tuesday. The regression continues to the previous Friday, because who wants to fly on a busy pre-holiday weekend?

    What's a proffie with a work ethic to do? Friday, I tell you: have your T-day feast on Friday! Cook on Thursday and invite people on Friday. It solves very many problems, such as young couples driving between both sets of parents' dinners in the same day.

    My husband keeps telling me we should do the same with Christmas, because you can get such a deal on trees Dec. 26.

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    1. We have the whole week off. I say this not to rub it in, but to show that, although we have this whole week off, students started to leave campus (we are a residential campus) last week (a few left on Tuesday; and my Wednesday and Thursday classes were at half attendance and a quarter attendance; the only ones left on Friday were those who were staying on campus or live in the community).

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    2. Kinda pushing it! Give 'em an inch...

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    3. EXACTLY! I enjoy the week off, but it certainly ends up being more trouble than it's worth.

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  2. My sympathies. I was the *student* who attended on Weds. evening, even though I was scheduled to fly over the river and through the woods later that evening, and then stayed up well past midnight getting a start on dinner (grandma was nearing 90, so I was the cook). So if we had had classes today (we don't), I would have been there, too (or at least would have scheduled conferences with students who were willing to come).

    But Proffie Galore is right; even though we pull from a fairly limited geographical area, students start disappearing over the weekend preceding Thanksgiving anyway (and start checking out mentally several days before that).

    I like the time-shifting idea (and it does, indeed, work for Christmas as well). Just remember to tell students you won't be available by email that day (and make sure you don't have any shopping-obsessed relatives; I, for one, will be celebrating Buy Nothing Day.

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    1. Oy, me too. Black Friday is the biggest sign that we are a bunch of pack animals fighting each other off for a sparkly meaningless object. FFS.

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  3. My undergrad never had this problem. It was a school in a big city, and most the students were just going to the suburbs.

    My grad school was different. It was one of those big name away-from-everything schools. There, it was a blessing if the dears showed up on Tuesday, let alone Wednesday.

    So now that I'm teaching at a new institution, I really struggled with whether to cancel class. And they surprised me -- about 50% showed up.

    In retrospect I should have canceled class, but I'm glad I didn't. We ended up talking very deeply about modern capitalism -- a bit off topic, quite fascinating to get their impressions of the world they are about to join, and in the end it was a lovely experience. Well done, students.

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    1. We were notified by the dean that we'd be in breach of contract if we cancelled class to allow students to leave early (granted, we had a week off, so it would be ridiculous to have cancelled classes last week). I would not cancel, but would find a way to reward those who did attend.

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  4. As an insufferably smug Canuckistani, I am always amazed at the convulsions over American Thanksgiving.

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    1. Don't Canadians also have Thanksgiving? I'm a transplant to the US, so it fascinates me that the Thanksgiving meal and Christmas meal appear near identical, one month apart. Then, I'm also interested in the fact that many American holidays revolve around simply eating food together, rather than serving any other function (I do find it admirable that at least it brings a family together, whether artificially or not), but I come from two cultures that have very specific ceremonies for specific holidays, only a few of which revolve around gathering to eat food as a family.

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    2. CC-
      I think America is too diverse and people move around and intermarry people from different settings too much to keep rituals strong. Only the core of the main tradition can survive - eat, usually turkey. Any particular family traditions get diluted after a few generations.

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    3. Most of the family traditions revolve around specific foods, anyhow!

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    4. Update: I'm no longer amazed at the contortions of Thanksgiving in America.

      I am now utterly gobsmacked!

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  5. Eventually Thanksgiving will be just a meal eaten to celebrate pre-Christmas shopping. :p

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  6. My school recently switched to this new schedule thing. Previously, we didn't have classes at all on Fridays; starting this year we now all have full schedules on Fridays.

    Therefore, every Friday this year feels for undergrads like the day before Thanksgiving. I'm routinely inundated with emails each Thursday from students who just can't come to class on Friday because, I mean, it's FRIDAY. And Friday is the day they have to visit their boyfriend/lay flowers on their grandmother's grave/work/catch up on sleep just like they did in years past.

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  7. I know CM is a place for misery, but it IS Thanksgiving,

    Today, 27 out of 28 students showed up on the day before a long weekend. The only missing student missed her first class all semester, so she deserves some slack--even though an aunt who suddenly came down with a mysterious malady didn't strike me as a particularly creative excuse.

    So I'm thankful for my working-class community college students who aren't innundating me with bullshit about needing the week off so they can vacation with their tea-partying parents in Aspen or Maui.

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  8. I wish we did have the whole week off. Our local school districts give all the K-12 kids the week off, and as a huge percentage of our population at Large Urban Community College is of the parental persuasion, that means three things:

    1. Kids will be brought to class.
    2. Students will just not come to class.
    3. Students will come to class in body, but their brains will be already contemplating the eating and shopping orgies that are to come.

    We get them back for just a week or so after all this anyway, so that week is about shot as it's the last week of class and God forbid we do anything productive other than shove the Holy Study Guide at them.

    I wish we just had the whole week off and tacked it on at the end. I'd rather work closer to the holidays than go through this charade.

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