Friday, April 12, 2013

Letters Never Sent

Dear Edna Ed Major:

The instructions on the prompt for your weekly essay assignment reminded you to follow the directions for submission included on the syllabus, instructions that clearly state that there must be no research outside of the weekly readings, and that you should not consult anyone else or any other sources, including and especially the internet.  Then, as a heading for the paper itself, you also had to include a statement saying you only consulted the weekly readings and did not do any outside research. The reason for this might be surprising.  But here’s a secret:  It’s because I only wanted you to consult the readings and did not want you to do outside research.

Well, you turned in your paper with the proper heading and all, and you confirmed that you only consulted the weekly readings.  Underneath that heading affirming that you’d only consulted our weekly readings was an essay that never mentioned our readings at all, with a citation page that included *all* internet sources.

Zero, you fucking clueless ed moron.  Zero.

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Dear Failing Phyllis:

No, you cannot have a WP.  Why not?  Because you received a 31 on your first test, that’s why.  You’d need to have gotten twice that to get a WP.  Begging won’t help, nor will telling me to have a “have a blessed day”.  Blessed are the F-givers.  Isn’t that what Jesus said?  No?  Well he should have. 

[+]

Dear Snitty Susan:

When I say “cell phones must be turned off during class” and that you must stay in your seat for the duration of class, these are not mere suggestions or requests.  They are fucking rules. Not guidelines, or suggestions, but rules.  This means no phones will ring in my class.  This means that there will be no students that stand up after having perused their vibrating phone, saunter out of class to take their “important” call, and then saunter back in when they have taken care of business. 

I don’t give a rat’s pecker how important that call was. This means I don’t give a rat’s pecker if your mom is sick.  I don’t give a rat’s pecker if your husband is sick.  I don’t give a rat’s pecker if your kid is sick.  I have a tremblingly old mom and set of in-laws, and I have my own husband, and my own kid goes to the same school yours does.

Do you see a fucking cell phone on my desk during class?  DO YOU?

[+]

Dear Lazy Larry:

What do you think “please read the attached files before our committee meeting” means?  Obviously you thought it means Don’t read the attached files because we’re just going to sit around and shoot the shit ‘n’ stuff. 

That must be why you’re sitting there, telling me that you didn’t know that you had to read the attached files. You were appointed to this committee, of which I am chair, so do the fucking work, ass-munch. Telling me “whatever you think is fine” only makes you look even more like a lazy douche bag. Why do you even bother to get up in the morning?    

Jerk.

[+]

Dear Weepy Wanda:

I am sorry that you’re crying.  Well, no, I’m not.  I don’t have the capacity to feel sorry for you at this moment, but here is a tissue, so you can dab yourself. 

You did not turn in your rough draft.  You only turned in a one-sentence thesis.  This means you get a zero for the rough draft.  It’s not like you didn’t know that.  I said it about seventeen times in class, and it’s on the syllabus and the prompt page.  Crying won’t make that zero go away.

More troubling is that the final draft is due in two days and you still don’t have a clue. Your thesis is a piece of shit.  So now you are crying, saying how much you hate writing.  I told you last week that you should avail yourself of my help in my extra office hours, and by sending in questions and perhaps even another draft for me to peruse.  I didn’t just tell the whole class.  I told you, personally.  You said you would be in my office on Tuesday, that you’d send me your work to get feedback.  You didn’t show, and you didn’t send the work, because you didn’t do it.  Then you said you’d show up Thursday.  You didn’t show up then, either.

Did you think that crying will help you now, after you’ve completely ignored my every attempt to help you?  It’s actually having the opposite effect.  You’re making me angry. 

You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

14 comments:

  1. I knew this was from Stella. Excellent way to end a Friday.

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  2. Stella is often my favorite human. And seriously, what the hell is it with Ed majors? I try to give them the benefit of the doubt, and that generosity continues to bite me in the ass.

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  3. Do you think that Ed majors get so used to their professors never really grading anything they turn in (everyone gets an A) that they tune out everything we say and everything they read?

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    1. Wait, C.C., are you suggesting that they read?

      I had some very good (amazing!) ed majors in my MA classes, but most of them never even bothered to read for grad-level classes. It was incredibly depressing.

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  4. Ah, Stella. Like the smell of napalm in the morning.

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  5. Take care, Stella.

    I'm being sent to remedial "Preserve their self-of-steam" training because apparently the mere act of having similar thoughts has seeped through what I thought was feedback utterly drained of any emotion, judgment, or substance.

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    1. Oh, dear, A&S. It sounds to me like you need a new job, not re-education. Of course, I realize that's easier said than done.

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    2. I once had to suffer through an "alternate learning styles" course for, apparently, similar reasons. It was a complete waste of time, mostly consisting of new-age edu-babble and was taught by someone who, as I understood, didn't have much of a background in education.

      Only one good thing came out of it. We had to go through some sort of left brain/right brain type of exercise. My score led me to investigate the requirements for membership in Mensa, which I joined 2 years after the course finished.

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    3. Poor A&S. But it's your fault for not following your neutral feedback with emoticons. ;-)

      It pains me to learn about colleagues having to be remedialized for providing feedback. The timing is particularly bad, because just yesterday I came up with what I thought was an all-purpose SnowFlake Feedback Line (SNFFL): "What grade did you say you were in? Oh, right: college."

      I wonder what Strelnikov thinks about proffie re-education sessions.

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  6. These letters always give me jolts of joy. Thanks for writing them. I like to imagine them sent.

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  7. I love the edgy sarcasm of the truth.

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  8. Stella is (our collective) Misery's Muse.

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  9. But...but...but Stella, those were *reputable* internet sources. And how dare you expect her to follow directions, even though it seems to be the one lesson still regularly taught in K-12 (and no, that's not a slam on K-12 teachers, but on the test-driven madness they face).

    Thank you for flunking her. The situation is already bad enough without adding incompetent teachers to the mix.

    I also loved your answer to Susan. Having grown up with a single parent who was frequently incommunicado due to work, I can attest that even the direst emergencies *can* be dealt with, at least for an hour or two, without contacting the parent. In fact, if the emergency is that dire, whoever's in charge darn well better be dialing 911 instead. And, of course, there's always the option -- of which Justice Ginsburg, I think it is, was apparently known to remind callers from her children's school -- of calling the *father* of the child. Even if he's sick himself, he can presumably cope for an hour or two.

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