First Day of Class
Yesterday was the first day of Spring term. After class, this girl comes up to me. She has that glint in her eye that marks her as a grade-grubbing menace. Um, I mean "high achiever."
"Is this class hard?" she asks. "I mean, like, challenging?"
I hate this kind of thing. Different things are challenging to different people. And what she really wants to know is if it's an easy A. For which she can look in student evaluations from previous years where they have a category for that very question. Plus, grow up. Stop worrying about your GPA for one fucking minute and worry about your education.
I try the old standby of pretending not to understand the question (passive-aggression, Feemus-style): "Well, the wonderful thing about literature is that it can be as challenging as you make it. There is always more to be discovered in a text. But if you're worried that you might be bored, come see me during office hours and we can set up some alternative assignments for you."
Usually at this point, the student looks faintly embarrassed and walks away. But this person is undaunted and unchagrined. Without missing a beat, she says: "But for grades. Is it challenging for grades?"
"It's medium," I say. Whatever that means. She walks off.
I talk to another student and turn around. And like some creature from a horror movie, there she is, having crept back, in silence like the night.
"Ack!" I say.
"Um, yeah," she says. "But how hard is it to get an A on the papers?"
I've lost patience. "Young lady," I say [I know how obnoxious this phrase is, but it just slipped out] "May I give you a bit of advice? I believe that you will find the most rewarding things are precisely the things that challenge us. And I guarantee you that if you write your essays with the grade in mind, they will be tepid and pointless. If you write them to teach yourself something that you didn't already know, you will likely succeed in spite of yourself. And if you ask me one more question about your grade in a course that you haven't even enrolled in yet I am not responsible for my actions." [this is why at least once a semester someone writes in their course evaluations something along the lines of "Feemus is a dick."]
"But..." she said, "Just...can you tell me..."
I actually walked away. In the middle of a conversation with a student, I turned my back on her and walked away. But sheesh.
"Is this class hard?" she asks. "I mean, like, challenging?"
I hate this kind of thing. Different things are challenging to different people. And what she really wants to know is if it's an easy A. For which she can look in student evaluations from previous years where they have a category for that very question. Plus, grow up. Stop worrying about your GPA for one fucking minute and worry about your education.
I try the old standby of pretending not to understand the question (passive-aggression, Feemus-style): "Well, the wonderful thing about literature is that it can be as challenging as you make it. There is always more to be discovered in a text. But if you're worried that you might be bored, come see me during office hours and we can set up some alternative assignments for you."
Usually at this point, the student looks faintly embarrassed and walks away. But this person is undaunted and unchagrined. Without missing a beat, she says: "But for grades. Is it challenging for grades?"
"It's medium," I say. Whatever that means. She walks off.
I talk to another student and turn around. And like some creature from a horror movie, there she is, having crept back, in silence like the night.
"Ack!" I say.
"Um, yeah," she says. "But how hard is it to get an A on the papers?"
I've lost patience. "Young lady," I say [I know how obnoxious this phrase is, but it just slipped out] "May I give you a bit of advice? I believe that you will find the most rewarding things are precisely the things that challenge us. And I guarantee you that if you write your essays with the grade in mind, they will be tepid and pointless. If you write them to teach yourself something that you didn't already know, you will likely succeed in spite of yourself. And if you ask me one more question about your grade in a course that you haven't even enrolled in yet I am not responsible for my actions." [this is why at least once a semester someone writes in their course evaluations something along the lines of "Feemus is a dick."]
"But..." she said, "Just...can you tell me..."
I actually walked away. In the middle of a conversation with a student, I turned my back on her and walked away. But sheesh.
posted by Feemus at
5:35 AM
3 Comments:
Uhm... But you never answered the question, Feemus. IS it hard?
You realize that you can avoid these awkward conversations forever by taking a page from my World Lit teacher back-in-the-day:
Staple a KFC application to every syllabus you pass out on the first day. Then tell the shocked masses of skullmush, "It's my job, my mission to flunk you out of school."
Trust me. You'll spend the first half of Day Two signing drop slips, and then you'll have nothing but the committed students left.
By
Anonymous, at 6:56 AM
One my friends always ecourages our newly teaching peers to walk in on the first day and begin the class introduction with "90% of you are completely worthless drag-shutes on society who should probably just shoot yourselves now and save the rest of us the aggravation of having to deal with you on a daily basis." So far he's hasn't had any takers on this approach.
By
RogueHistorian, at 7:24 AM
KFC aps? Drag-shutes? Ouch!
You guys are hardcore.
So Dwight, was the World Lit class "hard"?
What's funny when I think about her insistence is what she really hoped to achieve by it. If I'd said it was easy, would she take that as a binding oral contract? Use it to petition her B+?
It's always the B+ students who bitch about their grades. For whatever reason.
By
Feemus, at 6:21 AM
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