Sharing the misery as the eight-week term ends

Thank God this term is finally almost over. I will have all my grades done by tomorrow afternoon and then can take a desperately needed Spring Break. Those of you who read my earlier post know I'm still dealing with my brother's death and spent most of the term playing catch-up. Most of my students have been great in terms of understanding if not always in ability. But of course, I also had to get my share of snowflakery. Here are the students I won't miss:

1. Self-Centered Susan. You'd think she would have done enough damage with her previous missive about how I could improve my teaching at midterm. But no, at the end of the term, she had to follow up with a P.S. about how my responses could have been more timely (I NEVER let an email from a student go more than 48 hours without an answer, and most of the time it's less than 24 hours) and I could have been more "encouraging" about the online tools at the beginning of class. She earned an A for her academic ability. I wish I could give a grade for character too.

2. Plagiarist Priscilla. She managed to cobble together a paper from seven different online sources probably thinking I'd never find them all. When bits and pieces of a paper fall together like a bunch of postmodern crap posing as art, few of which address the actual topic at hand, that is Clue #1. When putting any of those random phrases into Google pulls up SparkNotes, someone's blog, or Wikipedia, that is Clue #2. When my annotating the paper to show all the plagiarism leaves one paragraph of the student's own words, that's Clue #3. Even my dimwitted chairperson didn't have to be hit too hard over the head with the clue bat to see this one.

3. Plagiarist Philip. He claimed he had no idea it was wrong to pull half a paper word for word from a website and not give the source. Apparently he slept through Comp I.

4. Unfair Ursula. She made the the equivocation mistake we talked about earlier: equating my status as the professor with hers as the student. I got a whiny missive about how unfair I am for not accepting late work or giving any "grace" to students while expecting them to accommodate my circumstances. And she wasn't just talking about the death in my family. She was pissy because I have sometimes had to reschedule office hours due to mandatory meetings for grants, committees, or other college service. Other than the week I took bereavement leave, my students were never deprived a moment of access. I always gave them notice when I had to change hours and made them up at comparable times. I even provided bonus hours whenever I could and gave them notice of those also even though my college's policy states I don't have to make up office hours spent in college service. (That's one more thing I will have to add to the syllabus now.)

She was also upset that I don't take late work. She seemed to have missed that part in the syllabus where if a student has a genuine emergency, he or she can petition me for an exception on one major assignment. I don't do it for little things like daily quizzes because those are designed to have some wiggle room assuming the student does a reasonable job the rest of the term. But I did take a late paper from a student whose grandfather was dying of complications from diabetes and reschedule a final for a student whose husband's boss dropped dead in front of him (it was in the news). I will be taking a late paper tomorrow morning from a student whose research partner melted down in the last 48 hours and disappeared from the class, not even taking the final exam.

I recall very few proffies who took late work in my undergrad days, which consisted of both SLAC and community college classes. I remember being allowed to reschedule a presentation once in an English lit class when I nearly passed out from an allergic reaction to an antibiotic and being given a paper extension once for pneumonia. That's about it. I remember professors not having office hours at all sometimes for a couple of weeks due to travel or research and being told to go to the tutoring center if we needed help. And of course we had no email back then, so nothing other than phone calls were an option for "instant" communication.

I am just glad it's almost over and I will have some time off. I did have some great students this term, but I'm glad the PITAs are going to be gone and I can start fresh with new students after the break. The ones who did well will probably come back and take me again at some point. I will look forward to seeing them. As to the rest, good riddance. I love eight-week terms because those folks go away faster!