I have a new-to-me student, who is a major in my area of History and Theory of the Material Culture of Hamsters; student is in both my lower and upper-division courses this term.I noticed this student right away, since we don't have many majors, and each week I give a painfully easy vocabulary quiz. I hand out two versions, with the answers switched up, so if you copy from the person next to you (which he did) you get everything wrong and I secretly think you're a jackass. First week. Grr. He only did that the one time. . . maybe (one fill-in-the-blank question a few weeks later was the same very wrong answer as the next one in the pile, but whatever.
So we had the upper div course exam the other day. Student comes up to turn it in and starts that preemptive mewling noise they sometimes do.
"I don't know if I'm maybe underprepared for this course. . . I don't seem to be getting it. . ."
"Well, you have the prereq, so you've already seen all this stuff in Elementary European Hamster Cabinetmaking. . ."
"Well, actually I transferred that in from my CC. It was a class in Albanian and Macedonian Hamster Bowl-lathing."
"Huh. How did they let that happen? [feeling generous and sympathetic, and irritated at the transfer office] You'll be fine-- just stick it out, ok?"
Now I look at the student's exam, and it is one of those really pathetic things-- missing all the really basic, easy terms and things that one would know if one had spent 10 minutes memorizing-- that makes it clear that the problem is not with "getting it" or any elevated, deep issues of more advanced content, but rather that not a lick of time was spent studying at all. And this annoys me, that the student is trying to pitch the latter as the former.
This is not a dumb-as-a-box-of-kittens student who is trying really really hard, but one who is not trying at all and the idea that one might be supposed to try, rather than a passive receptacle, hasn't yet occurred. Not even doing a decent job of faking it. I just know that when I hand back this exam with a 50% or so on it, that I'm going to get, "But but but I'm a good student! I always get As!" And the most caring thing I will be able to respond will be, "Welcome to real college. So when are you going to get serious?"
Herrgott im Himmel, how I hate-hate-hate that mewling sound. I get it whenever I get a student asking to do a research project in astronomy, and when I tell them what to do, they say, "I didn't know you had to stay up late at night to do that!" I have four of them now, all with distinctively different dysfunctions, and am on the verge of going totally batshit loco. I wonder whether Stella has any extra Xanax.
ReplyDeleteI despise transfer credit from community colleges that does not adequately prepare students for university-level work.
ReplyDelete"But it wasn't this hard at my community college," they would whine at me. I'm with Dr. Lemurpants. Welcome to real college. Now buck the fuck up and learn. If they can't learn the material at this time, then drop and try again in the future.
We fight this battle at the community college level regularly. I'm in a system where clear differences exist between the CCs. Our grads do better than almost any other CC in my state when they transfer and average higher GPAs than the university natives. Unfortunately for us, some of our system schools have higher graduation and transfer rates than we do (even though those schools have lower bachelor's grad rates after they transfer). Guess who gets pressured for being too "elitist" and "impeding success"?
DeleteIt's not a matter of being underprepared for the class; this student is unforgivably underprepared for college, in general. Guess that grade is going to have to help motivate hir to "buck the fuck up" (as Maybell so eloquently put it).
ReplyDeleteI teach at a cc. Most our students are underprepared for 4th grade. The philosophy here is to make each and every course as easy as possible for the darlings. We choose books that have no higher than a 9th grade reading level and for our intro course, we leave stuff out, lots of stuff and this course transfers to a 4-year college. Help us all! My students think I'm unfair because I teach a college-level course, expect college level reading and writing. It's college for the love of Zeus. Most of my colleagues create tests with simple-as-can-be questions, worded for first graders. They argue with me that the dears can't understand, so we have to simplify. What the fuck am I missing here?
ReplyDeleteI had the same problems when I taught at a CC. I would give exams with questions that were WORD for WORD from the homework. The students would fail them. Every. Single. Time.
DeleteAs a result, the local university stopped automatically accepting the transfer credits from that CC and started giving an in-house exam to ensure competence of the subject matched the CC's grades.
I, too, experienced that when I taught at a CC. I assigned a book that I knew 9th graders read and was told to select a novel that was easier because it was too difficult for our CC students to read (in a 100-level course). Sadly, the universities around did not stop accepting transfer credit; I wish they had!
DeleteAt my current job (Private SLAC), we can always tell which of our adjuncts have spent most of their time at a CC b/c they're ridiculously easy and don't expect much of our students.
We get some very good cc transfers (probably because our local cc is quite good, and because, for a variety of reasons, a good number of our cc transfers chose the cc primarily for financial reasons; they could have come directly to us instead), but I am not unfamiliar with that mewling sound from self-proclaimed "A students." Some of them are lying, I strongly suspect; others are just dealing with the aftereffects of choosing to be a big fish in a small pond (and not making any effort to counteract the dangers of that situation by seeking out more challenge than required).
ReplyDeleteOne of my most gleeful moments in college was when a student attempted to claim that "my last class didn't teach that" and I reminded hir that I had been the professor of that last class and that I had, indeed, covered that information.
DeleteWhen I started at this gig, I taught hamster-wrangling. Whenever I asked a basic question about hamster anatomy or husbandry, I was met with wails of "we never had that!".
DeleteThen they handed me the hamster anatomy course.
Next time I heard "we never had that!" the folIowing year, I corrected them.
Unfortunately, it has become an annual event.
I teach at a CC. If you get my students, you will be happy. I am a hardass, I don't water the shit down, and I fail buttloads of lazy and/or underprepared and/or dumbasses. If a student earns an A in my courses, s/he would probably earn an A wherever s/he went. Very few earn that A.
ReplyDeleteThere are *some* of us at the CC level who prepare students properly for transfer and/or the employment arena.
I am also not nice. I am a hardass, though I have colleagues who are not. Not even close, they water stuff down, talk to students like they are pre-schoolers and make sure the average grade is a B. The problem is that there is no consistency and when 60 percent or more of the faculty are contingent the ability to be tough dwindles. I teach basically the same course I taught when I was at a SLAC or a large University. But I fear the powers that be would rather we were "nicer" and less tough.
DeleteAdd me to the not nice list. I fail students and sleep soundly.
DeleteI also scream at and kick them, as you might recall.
Add me to the not nice list. I fail students and sleep soundly.
DeleteI also scream at and kick them, as you might recall.
I have tons of awesome CC transfer students (some of my best students actually; we do get a LOT of transfers from the local CC). This isn't one of them. But I don't think the CC background is the main problem.
ReplyDeleteCCs are a crapshoot, let's face it. Some are great, some are horrible. At mine, we have faculty members who uphold college level standards, and those who do not uphold 2nd grade level standards. I was speaking with a math prof the other day. As I have stated elsewhere, the Math/Science dept at my CC is actually allowed to uphold standards. Because they don't trust that the remedial studies dept. folks are actually preparing their students for the college level math courses they teach (well----DUH!) the math folks have received permission at my CC to retest them rather than accept the passing grade in the remedial course. the profs from the remedial studies dept are having absolute fits. And guess what? The testing is showing that VERY FEW of those students have the skills they were supposed to have been taught to receive the passing grades they received. Oh how I WISH we could do that with the remedial writing classes!
ReplyDeleteThis student is a whiner. I hate him by proxy. I hate when they obviously do not study, and they fail, and then they say it is all too hard. I give a study guide that has ALL the questions I might ask on it. So I am giving them the test in my study guide. ALL they have to do is study. No, there is not too much info for one person to study. I do have students ace my tests. But most of them fail, and fail big time, because the idea that they might have to actually STUDY for something is outrageous to them.
Everyone else has said what I'd say, except this:
ReplyDeleteThe title is my favorite SLO EVER! Sure wish I could use it.