Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Wednesday Smackdown

A quick smackdown:

Bitching Bee: Your entitlement complex is one of the worst I've ever seen.

  • I told students they could email me up to a 8:30 PM the night before the exam. You email me at 8:29 PM and says she's missing some of the slides, and where can she find them.
  • I started the exam 5 minutes after class began, to give everyone time to fill out the Scantrons and to allow time to hand out the exams (since I have two versions). After the exam ended, you told me, "You HAVE to make adjustments because you started 5 minutes late." You only shut up after I told you all exams start 5 minutes after the start of class.
  • When I handed out the exams, you insisted I look at the exam grade and read it to you because she was afraid. When I told you I couldn't do that by law, you looked at it herself, noticed the ultra low score and started whining "How baaad is this? How baaad?"
  • In the last class, you started whining about how she didn't understand a simple arithmetic problem. When you didn't understand it after a second explanation, you whined "Is this gonna be on the quiz on Thursday?"

Given the combination of your major and your attitude, I'd be surprised if you were even employed after graduation.

Tweeting Tim: Early in the semester, Frat Tim tweeted about one of my examples, with the hash #[MyLastName]. Members of my family tweet using that hash, as I occasionally do. (All of our accounts are protected, so no one else can see our tweet.) Tim's account is not protected, so my family and friends immediately saw his tweet and let me know about it. That put him on my radar screen, and a few weeks later, he tweeted during my class that he wanted to "throw up all over [MyLastName's] face." (I would have have known he had his phone on unless I saw the tweet.)

His attitude, like Bee's infects the rest of the class.

KissAssKarly, another student with an unprotected twitter account, favorited Tim's post and, after getting an excellent score on the exam, has started tweeting during (though not about class) herself.

Tweeting Tom: Tom, Tim's frat brother did the same thing, which put him on my radar as ewll. The difference is that his tweets were innocuous. Before the exam, he wrote "[Name of Penny's course/subject] is fun, though in a horrifying, sick way." Since all his other tweets about school were negative, I got a kick out of the fact that he enjoyed the class but couldn't admit it to his buddies. Unlike the other two, he's in the afternoon section, and I think he may have been infected by their positive attitude.

If Karly or Tim end up on the borderline between two grades, would it be fair to bump them down? (Yes, I've already reduced their in class participation for the days when they Tweeted during my class. This is right on my syllabus, but of course, I can't catch everyone who's looking down at a phone during class. By putting themselves out in the open, Tim and Karly have made it easy for themselves to get caught.)



5 comments:

  1. I'm confused.

    Can you explain why Bitching Bee is alternatively "she" and "you"? Is there another student involved in that story?

    I'm confused.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Me, too, but I think it's a case of simply forgetting to change the pronouns. I hope. Otherwise, Bitching Bee has multiple personality disorder???

      Delete
    2. I used the first person. Then I remembered that smackdowns were done in the second person and started changing the pronouns, but didn't get to all of them.

      Delete
  2. If Karly or Tim end up on the borderline between two grades, would it be fair to bump them down?

    Bumping UP is a favor. Why do them a favor??? Simply grade them based on their already poor performance, sans any good graces from your end.

    You are (essentially) being paid to be fair, not nice...or benevolent.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You could always just print out their tweets, highlight the time stamp, and hand them to them during class. Say nothing. They might learn a valuable lesson about shutting the hell up online (a lesson this whole generation sorely needs, I think).

    ReplyDelete

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