Thursday, September 19, 2013

This Week's Big Thirsty. Let's Put Aside the Normal Proffie Pet Peeves and Write Some New, Badass Ones.

We get a lot of links like this one, a usually recycled list of proffie pet peeves (you know, don't ask if you missed anything important, don't ask about something on the syllabus). The lineup only rarely changes.

They're actually good for kids going into college, but we've posted things like this so often that I just thought we should start our own CM list. The Real Badass, "Is Walter from Waxahachie A Lot Like Walter White, Beaker Ben Is Going to Set You Up and Stella Is Going to Knock You Down, But You Better Pray Strelnikov Doesn't Get Word About Your Stupidity" Pet Peeves for the Modern Proffie, Proud, Profane, Pissed Off, and Profound.

Q: What is your Badass Pet Peeve About Doing this Gig?






44 comments:

  1. I hate it when students surf porn in the classroom, and then don't send me the links.

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    Replies
    1. This IS badass. Of course you stole it from me, and I got it from Beaker Ben.

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    2. Have you seen what the kids are into these days? You don't want their links. It's all Bronies and shit.

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    3. WTF is a "Bronie"? Ok--googled it.

      Worse than I could have imagined.

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  2. I hate it when students turn in the same assignment I gave them a zero on for plagiarism last semester.

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    Replies
    1. Mine don't do that. They turn in the same assignment that earned a zero for plagiarism in one of my colleagues' classes.

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    2. I just had a student submit a homework portfolio with the same pages he submitted last semester. Unfortunately for him, and his buddy that copied the assignment exactly, the textbook changed to a new edition and I updated the problem numbers.

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    3. It is a weird feeling when they plagiarize something YOU wrote. "Funny, this seems familiar..."

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  3. I get pissed when students have a problem and don't follow the chain of command, only to find out the snowflake didn't tell the dean the truth to begin with.

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  4. If you are gonna cry in my office, bring your own damn kleenex.

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  5. If your work is late than YES, the "Late Work" dropbox is for you. Stop sending me a litany of medical, criminal, personal, and technological problems and then asking me "Where do I send my late work???" You are not special. You are not an exception. I don't care why it's late, it goes in the fucking "Late Work" box. And if you e-mail it to me, I will fucking download it and put it in the late box myself. Oh, you want to know when I'm going to get around to grading it? Twelve hours before the end of the course, that's when.

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  6. Partial credit? All you did was write down an informal version of a definition (incorrectly at that), without a single step in the right direction towards actually solving the problem; and you want partial credit?

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    Replies
    1. I get many that answer such questions as "What is the function of tertiary frills on hamsterfur?" by writing "the function of tertiary frills on hamsterfur is" and wondering why they didn't get partial credit.

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  7. Your tuition pays my salary? What salary? You pay this school more for room and board than I can afford for all my expenses combined, and I eat a PBJ for lunch, every day, and sometimes dinner.

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  8. My pet peeve is the weak-ass lie, the lazy lie, the unimaginative.

    If you're going to give me an excuse (which I'm going to ignore anyway), I want one like this from the Yaro archives:


    "Dr. Yaro," they will report - breathlessly, "My cousin Thanatos just telephoned me from Denver. There, it appears, has been a rather heated argument with my Aunt Sophia. A credit card has come up missing, and my poor cousin is afraid that his mother suspects him of using it for a long evening of debauchery and then disabusing himself of the card. My family often turns to me in cases like this. I would hate for the dispute to escalate, and therefore, after my shift at the Carl's Jr. this afternoon, I am going to endeavour to catch a ride with my friend Cieros, who has a car and the newest Arcade Fire compact disc. I knew you would not want me to come to class when I am as jangly and distracted with my family emergency."

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    Replies
    1. If there's anything that drives me batshit loco, it's when students lie to me when they didn't even have to, particularly when I hadn't even asked!

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  9. Here's one for the modern campus.

    I recognize and appreciate that you, as an international student, bring a unique and valuable perspective to our class that promotes diversity and cultural awareness among the larger student community. While I teach you, I remain aware that your cultural values may differ from ours in ways that enrich us all, allowing us to learn from each other. (I actually believe some of that crap too.)

    However.

    If any of you turn in a plagiarized lab report, I'll fail your foreign ass like any other fucking pasty white, moneyed, legacy frat boy. I can't give two shits about how you were only giving proper respect to the authoritative text by copying it, or how you wanted to simply help your friend who is from the same village as you. You want to show respect to authority? Do what I fucking say. You want to do your friend a favor? Tell him to avoid the dining hall's split pea soup on Tuesday.

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  10. 1st year introductory class, 500+ students in a cavernous lecture hall, I get it if you whip out the phone and do some texting in the middle of my lecture, with the elevated stage and theatre aisles and all that we're actually quite some distance from one another.

    However, 4th year advanced class, 16 student enrollment, 12 actually show up, I'm standing 6 feet away from you at a little lectern plunked on top of a small table, STOP FUCKING TEXTING WHILE I'M TALKING! A substantial amount of my time is spent actually lecturing "to you", because you're one of the only mofos in the goddamned room!

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    Replies
    1. I just mark them absent. It's in my syllabus. Still sucks immensely though.

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    2. If there's a glow coming from beneath the desk, their fingers are moving while they look down smiling, I hope the students are texting.

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    3. They could be masturbating radioactive naughty bits.

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  11. Complete lack of any initiative-at all. We now have Blackboard. When I checked last night only about half of my classes had even gone to the site, and those who did haven't been back since the first day. They have a paper schedule in their hands and a schedule, along with articles and YouTube videos related to the course, online. Yet they continue to ask me "Did I miss anything important?" when they miss a class.

    Sorry, this is a familiar gripe. Seeing as we just adapted this 'new' way of communication, I naively thought things would improve. *sigh*

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  12. Ayn Rand was an evil bitch and her "philosophy" is nothing but an excuse to be an asshole because you're "special." You're not a "maker." You're a snotty 19 year old spoiled kid and, if it wasn't for your folk's money, you'd be working at a fast-food drive through. You wouldn't last 30 minutes doing hard physical labor, so stuff the comments about how the working poor as "dumb and lazy." They're contributing a lot more to society than you ever will.

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  13. I'll admit it, I write hard quizzes. You might even call some of them downright bastardly. But these reading quizzes...how can you consistently score Fs on them? They're multiple-choice.

    Sure, the questions go deeper than "Which of these words appeared in the chapter?" That's because I need to make sure you actually read the got-dam chapter, not just skimmed it while you were watching Tosh.0 and texting "ur frenz abt how u h8 Mndbendrz clss."

    Fer chrissake...one of the possible answers was "your mom," and you would've received half-credit for picking that one because it's technically correct. Pay attention to the content, dammit.

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  14. People who rely on rumors and then challenge me about said rumors in the classroom.

    EXAMPLE:
    I heard that so-and-so didn't turn in his homework. What kind of classroom are you running? We did that homework and we turned it in. Why does he get special treatment??

    Snowflake, I didn't assign homework last week. You just handed me your discussion notes. I threw them away.


    EXAMPLE:
    All of us are disappointed that there are those high school students taking this class. This isn't high school!! Why is there a younger person here??

    Snowflake, that person is here because they graduated early. They, like you, are college students. They, unlike you, are working very hard. Stop listening to rumors and start reading your godammned book.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Eek. That sounds like an, um, interesting classroom/campus culture. I get the occasional student who thinks this way, but, in isolation, (s)he's relatively easy to squelch with a slightly-veiled version of MYOB (hey! another use for FERPA). If they came in groups (or even thought they did), it would be harder.

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    2. It isn't just in uni, and it isn't just students. A friend of mine who is an elementary school principal had to *ban* loitering in the school parking lot, by parents, because a group of mothers (dubbed "The Parking Lot Mafia" by teachers and staff) would stand around gossiping about teachers, other parents, and other children, until one of them got upset about a rumour and would storm in to the office spewing anger and outrage. And, every time there was no truth to the rumour. And this happened EVERY DAY. Since the ban, bliss.

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    3. YES THIS.

      The problem here is that I am starting a research center that has an education component connecting early high school grads with college students. These are the Doogie types with a high school diploma at 16. So my intro course has a mixture of traditional Fresh and early graduate fresh.

      The early grads? Not yet 18. Still minors. Parents hover.

      GOD THE PARENTS HOVER.

      Delete
  15. "Are you going to give us a study guide?"

    The first time, I am mildly annoyed. But the question is understandable. They do not know me.

    The second time, I narrow my eyes and say, "No. We have been over this."

    The third time, I narrow my eyes and grind my teeth and say, "No. We have been over this."

    The fourth time, I narrow my eyes and grind my teeth and scowl and say, "No. We have been over this."

    But the fifth time...

    ...the fifth time, I laugh.

    And say, "The next time someone asks me that, I make the test a little bit harder. And I will continue to make the test just a bit harder each time I am asked. So. Now. WHO WANTS TO KNOW IF THERE WILL BE A STUDY GUIDE?"

    Funny thing?

    There's always one.

    Watching the rest of the class freak out at this clueless dolt is worth it all.

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    Replies
    1. I love this and will steal it, but why wait until the fifth time?

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    2. To give it a narrative arc? ;)

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    3. To give it a narrative arc? ;)

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    4. Ah. But -- and this is not a criticism -- I know of no narrative motif using the number five. It's three in the Bible and Grimm Brothers, four in Native American coyote stories, and twenty-seven in the oevre of Weird Al Yankovic.

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  16. Technology. Things (that, as far as I could tell, worked reasonably well) are being "upgraded" beyond the ability of my admittedly-out-of-date home technology to cope, and I don't have time or money to upgrade right now. There are workarounds, of course, but they, too, take time.

    Oh, and I can't just go in to the office and work there, because the technology in my office is just as out of date as the technology at home (I guess the university is short on time and money, too).

    The computers in my classrooms work beautifully, but I'm only there a few hours a week, and I'm supposed to be teaching, not answering emails on the only machine I've encountered that doesn't take at least five minutes to cope with a single open-read-reply sequence.

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  17. But my other instructors always let me ____________________.

    I've never really listened to end of the sentence.

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  18. Late papers late papers late papers late papers late papers. And then whining about how I treat late papers.

    Look, if I can prep 2-3 lecture/discussion thingies per week for you, get my ass out of bed and drive an hour and a half to get to you, find parking, be in class on time every single time, answer your e-mail within 24 hours, and get graded papers back to you within a week of receiving them, YOU CAN GET ME A PAPER ON TIME.

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  19. "I was/will be absent on ____ because ____." I don't care. RTFS.

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  20. I always hated it when students came to tell me they couldn't afford the textbook while texting on their fancy phones or pulling out an iPod.

    Also, I love the ones who give me excuses that are easy to smack down. I always remember the kid who said he had a hard time tracking me down to request an override for the class, because he went to the main office and no one knew who was teaching that section. Dude, you went in December, and I signed the contract to teach the only section of that course in October. Also, your ROOMMATE got in to the section, so he could've told you who was teaching it. No override for you!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "I always hated it when students came to tell me they couldn't afford the textbook while texting on their fancy phones or pulling out an iPod."

      Yes. This definitely should be on the newfangled list of proffie pet peeves.

      Delete
  21. Don't mistake my courtesy for interest in your excuse. I will smile and nod once, say, "I see," and then refer you to the syllabus as many times as necessary. When I get up and head for the door with my arm extended for you to follow, it means, "Go away now." When I close my office door and say, "Well, see you in class!" it is not an invitation for you to explain again why it won't be the next class. When I unlock the door down the hall, go through it, and close the door behind me with you on the other side, feel free to keep on explaining. My colleagues love it when you do that.

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    Replies
    1. No matter how many times I tell them I don't need to be informed of why they won't be in class, and, indeed, aggressively DO NOT WANT to be informed, they keep coming to me to apologize for missing class and give me long-winded explanations of why. Three out of four times, such explanations include medical info to which I wish I were not privy - one of the prime motivators for instituting said policy.

      Idiots, the lot of them.

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    2. And it's just not professional to put one's hands over one's ears and shout, "BLALALALALALALALALALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU BLALALALALALALALALA."

      Delete

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