Thursday, January 3, 2013

An Open Letter to My Spring Students....

Dear Flakes,

Hi. I've been getting your panicky emails ever since Christmas. Me, too; I'm nervous too!

Here are answers to the top 10 questions:

  1. Yes, our MW class meets every Monday and every Wednesday, including the first Monday and Wednesday of the semester. Crazy!
  2. The books are in a building on campus called the bookstore. Take your registration slip, which shows your class number and section, and then move through space and time until you find a stack of books for your class. Buy those. Bring them.
  3. No, I didn't know what a great English teacher you had in high school. It should make our job even easier!
  4. If I knew if it was going to snow next week, I'd be on channel 11.
  5. It depends. If your class time is 8-9:20 am, then we start at 8 and end at 9:20. If it's another time, then follow the rules set down by the ancient Italian timekeeper Casio Timex and meet me in your classroom AT THOSE TIMES.
  6. We do have a syllabus. I have a whole stack of them. You'll get your own copy in class next week. I'm not going to "shoot" it over to you now, though.
  7. No, I don't who the best History professor is.
  8. The only assignment for the first day is: COME TO THE FIRST CLASS AND FIND OUT.
  9. I can't tell you where to park. I can't look that deep into your needs and concerns.
  10. Yes, I know about Greek life. I'm glad you're having such fun. I can't tell you that you can bring a live animal to class for a lot of reasons. No, I don't want to do a tour of the new house. I do play ping pong, but only with my hubby.

32 comments:

  1. Great post: even better graphic!

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    1. All the men love Darla; damn shame she's taken.

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    2. The graphic's cool, but I still miss the shorts.

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  2. Holy wow, Darla. These are just...wow.

    I vote POW.

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  3. Who prints out syllabi anymore? Post that shit online. ;-)

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    1. I do, we're required to, they're useful as bludgeoning instruments at the end of the semester ("You were given a paper copy, AND it's available online!")

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    2. I print it, and go over it on the first day so there's no confusion later over "You never told us this!". It's also posted on the course LMS.

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    3. Same here, "Well, I gave them a hard-copy of the syllabus and went over it in class..."

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    4. I always say "paper copy," since many of them don't know what "hardcopy" means.

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    5. Required here as well, although I've shortened what I give out in class and require students to find the rest online. And I post virtual copies of what I do give out in class.

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  4. On a side note, I love that the current ad in the sidebar (for me) is for a women's apparel site--and the ad features just the lower half of extraordinarily thin women wearing "skinny" jeans and absurdly high patent leather heels. Wonder if that has anything at all to do with Darla's graphic.

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    1. They have fabulous purses and the detachable shoulder straps are solid and sufficiently long.

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  5. Ugh. I hate and loathe and despise that "can you shoot me a copy of the syllabus" email shit. And I'm eternally grateful not to be at a school with a Greek system.

    Yes. POW.

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    1. Students should know never to begin a sentence with, "Can you shoot me..."

      The answer is "YES" before I get to dependent clause.

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    2. Psst... You forgot to change your log-in ID to "Strelnikov" before posting this. You might want to delete it before someone else notices.

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    3. Thanks for the alert, Sawyer. With only four people handling 100 user accounts on this blog, mistakes like this are bound to happen.

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  6. I wonder if I ever annoyed my profs by asking pre-semester what the textbook was and if they were going to use it for homework. They probably were annoyed, but I did have legit reasons for asking:

    a) have had profs forget to submit their textbook choices and have to pay full price after semester starts because I have to get it at the bookstore
    b) have had profs submit wrong choice and have to sell it at a 20% loss without ever opening it
    c) have had profs request the latest edition and then never use any of the "latest" changes, where I could have spent $5 on an old edition and gottent 95% the same content.


    #6 and #8 in the list seem like they could have plausible concerns.

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    1. I could easily teach my core survey class with any edition of any of the standard textbooks printed within the last 20 years. But the university keeps insisting on the newest edition with all kinds of bells and whistles and occasionally changes the publisher/title. That is probably because the older editions are out of print and, while widely available used, cannot be guaranteed available. So the students pay $60 or more over and above what I, as a prof, need them to pay and I have to change my syllabus every year (no big deal - just a few page number references).

      If I were the prof in control of my class, I would like to do this: Find a book I liked that I could get 30 copies of and "rent" them to my students for the cost of postage +$5 or something - until I broke even, then stop charging the $5. Students who want to keep their copy could get it themselves used online or buy a copy from me.

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    2. I never asked pre-semester questions, but I know I was a keener with some proffies at my undergrad institution, much to my shame. I was a really good student, however, and they seemed to like me.

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  7. Can someone who doesn't appreciate requests for emailed syllabi explain why sending syllabi might be a problem? Or why it annoys you?

    I have always sent my syllabus (or just my assignment schedule if I don't have it all put together yet) before the semester started to students who asked. The way I see it, even if these students are keeners and probably lawyerly about their points, at least they'll have no excuse not to know the schedule or my policies. And it weeds out the slackers early on, if they know what's good for them, because they get an early view of what the class will be like and can drop before the semester even begins. I can't think of any good reasons to let this particular request piss me off -- and I look for reasons for my students to piss me off as a matter of course. Any enlightenment?

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    1. Lucy,
      For me it is two-fold.

      1) As the syllabus is the closest thing we have to a learning "contract," the universities I've taught for were particular about the where/when of distribution, particularly in the pre-LMS days.

      2) But in these post-LMS days, my syllabus is permanently wedded to the course content, all of which becomes available a week before the beginning of the course. Textbooks have to be registered with the bookstore at least a month before the opening of the term and, in this modern world, they are usually the ones who inform me that a new edition has been published.

      Bottom line, the "shoot me a copy" types are the worst kind of keener because the information they seek invariably was available with 30 - 60 seconds of effort, instead they choose to request to have it provided to them. Ultimately, I end up telling them to download it from the LMS anyway.

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    2. A recent favorite I received:

      "I need to take another class that has a conflict with yours, and so I wouldn't be able to make the Monday meeting and only half of the Wednesday meeting. I would be willing to meet with you once a week and go over the material I messed in class, because I really, really want to take your class!"

      Tea partying snowflake wanted me to be his private tutor!

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    3. I post mine online (required to), as well, but I've had students ask for a syllabus for a course I'm teaching next semester when I'm still working on final grades for THIS semester. I've had students ask for a book list for a class I'm teaching in 9 months. Some of us don't have the syllabus done three weeks ahead of the semester and a student requesting it is just a reminder that we don't have it done yet.

      I don't mind sharing my syllabus if I have it done; it usually prompts deadbeats to drop. :)

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    4. It's funny how students would actually ask for what I used to see as punishment or being shortchanged. I'm still very disappointed that I didn't get to attend one of my classes for the last few weeks even though I got that kind of private tutoring and I ended up passing with a decent grade. I almost felt like going back to university to retake that class (or, if not possible, to take another class with the same professor) just to help me deal with this unresolved issue. I even emailed the professor to speak my mind (very politely), just once but many years later (I don't know what he thought, he never responded). Learning that others would actually ask for the kind of arrangement I was pressured into accepting makes me feel better.

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  8. I'm lucky if they show up the first day of class with pencil and paper most of the time.

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    1. Same here. I hardly ever get pre-class requests of this sort, but part of that is because it's such a tiny department--if they have questions about the course, they just ask the upper-classpersons their advice rather than deal with me. But once the term begins, I also double up on syllabus distribution: printout and posted online as a PDF to the LMS, plus every tea-partying term I have to retype everything into the university system for some crazy reason. Mumblegrumbleblergh.

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  9. I still have the "out of office" return message set up on email until the term starts. No, I don't have a single syllabi to send out. One text has yet to arrive and another text is suddenly out of print. But that's alright, texts from another course are listed as mine.

    If someone wants to know what they are going to do in class they can find me in my office, sobbing.

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    1. Sarcastic Bastard has the recipe for success! I, too, have the "out of office" reply until the term starts. I'm not some sort of cable television on-demand program. They can have access to me when I'm working again. This is a break. They can deal with it.

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