FREE ADVICE: THINGS TO AVOID SAYING TO YOUR PROFESSOR ON THE DAY OF THE FINAL EXAM…
And other stories from the trenches….
O.K., so admittedly, I was, am, will forever be, a neurotic, compulsive nerd. Still, I find myself completely speechless at the “excuses” and “solutions” I hear from students around exam time. I refuse to believe that I ever sat in a classroom with people who came up with stories like I’ve been fielding this week, but perhaps I’m just in denial? The department chair at the University here claims it is a generational thing. She says that nobody over thirty can relate to the students we have now. I really don’t want this to be true. I want to believe it is this bunch, or me, or the class, or the culture, or something. Or maybe just that I’m not over thirty…
Down here in Mexico, we’re finishing up our semester. (I taught a course in historical archaeology this semester for the anthropology department…) My class had their final exams last week, and the excuses started at 9.30 the morning of the exam. For those of you reading this who are still students, or will be students again, I thought I’d give a rundown of things not to say to your professors before, during or after an exam. For the rest of you? Think of it as encouragement to increase your contributions to your retirement funds! Because if this is truly generational, the social security system is doomed!
Also, there are more updates below… I just need to get this off my chest first!
So here it goes…
BEFORE EXAM
In an email…
“Dear Professor, I’ve just discovered that the project I’ve been working on for another professor isn’t good enough. I’m going to skip the final exam tonight so that I can work on that instead. I’m busy tomorrow, but I’m free Friday morning. Let me know what time Friday morning between 9 and 12 is good for you, and where I should meet you. I will take the exam then…”
Silly me… I was operating under this ridiculous delusion that universities and professors set the time and date of exams! I guess this really is a learning process! Thank god my student clued me in to this early, or I might have spent my whole career trying to make students take exams at hours that were inconvenient to them!
For those still in school… This email will not win you points. Especially if you send it at an hour that means it will be the first thing your professor sees in the morning when she wakes up before she has had her coffee. I promise you, this isn’t a pretty time of day for anybody involved. You might want to moderate your tone a bit. If you don’t, you will receive a response that sums up as:
“You are welcome to miss the exam tonight and take a zero. Have a nice day and good luck with that other project.”
My day went rapidly downhill from there…
I have/had this student who stopped coming to class eight weeks ago, give or take a month. I wasn’t particularly worried about it because I’ve seen him around campus, most notably sitting in the courtyard in front of the classroom half an hour before class time and directly in front of my office. I figured, “Well, he dropped the class. No biggie. I mean he is here and he could come to class, or tell me if there is a problem, right?”
Wrong.
Beauty tip, guys… If you are going to skip class, don’t sit on the bench located halfway between the professor’s office and her classroom. She actually does notice!
This student, who I hadn’t spoken with in eight weeks and who’d missed not only eight weeks of classes but three class assignments in the interim, comes to my office 30 minutes before exam time. He sits down in the chair across from my desk and proceeds to launch into a series of vague excuses. Evidently, he had “some things to take care of” that had prevented him from coming to class “a couple times,” and “maybe missing an assignment or two?” And he knew the exam was that day and clearly “didn’t feel prepared to take it.”
Clearly.
Luckily, he had a solution!
They always have solutions…
Since grades weren’t due for two weeks, he cheerfully explained to me, he thought that what we could do is have private classes in the meantime. He’d come to my office, and I would summarize eight weeks of exams for him and when we were finished, he’d take the exam then!
And the assignments he’d missed! Well, obviously, he couldn’t be expected to DO them, but he was pretty sure we could “work something out that would be agreeable to both of us…”
Uh huh…
Oh where to start!?!?!?!?
O.K., so here is the thing. What I do, IT IS WORK. Like real work. I actually spend time preparing lectures and putting together slides. The assignments I give you? They are actually also work for me, and so I give them sparingly and for a reason. Going to class? I don’t always want to go either. Sometimes, it is really, really inconvenient. And when I’m not in class? I’m actually doing other work, work that is more important than your hangover last week.
I promise you. You will NEVER win points with your professor by suggesting that instead of holding you accountable for the work you should have done and the classes you should have gone to, she instead shows up and spends time giving you lectures one on one. This isn’t a good deal for anybody but you. This is just extra work that she has to do to make your life easier. She never asked for it.
Remember, please, that you are trying to make the life of the person who gives you your grades more difficult. Is this EVER a winning strategy?
After staring in disbelief over the audacity of the whole thing, I finally just smiled and said, “As I see it, you have two options at the moment. 1. you can drop the class. 2. you can take the test or not, but fail the class regardless. It is your call.”
He tried to argue the point, telling me that he couldn’t drop any more classes (has already dropped the max limited allowed by the university before they kick you out) and that he couldn’t afford to fail my class either. I told him this wasn’t my problem to fix, it was his, and I wished him the best of luck resolving the issue.
DURING EXAM
Walking into the exam, I foolishly thought that I was done with the “drama,” and that we would be able to settle down to business. With this level of naiveté, you’d never know I’ve either been taking or giving exams for ten years straight now!
I hand out the exam, the students settle in to take it after the usual expressions of dismay over the difficulty of the test. Halfway through the test, somebody’s phone rings. My cross to bear yells, “S**T!” and leaps out of his chair while frantically digging through his bag. Instead of just turning off the phone, as I was expecting him to do, he announces to the class, “I’ve got to take this…” and, before I can say anything, runs, at top speed, out of the room.
The students and I look at each other in disbelief while he stands right outside the door of the classroom and has a loud and completely audible conversation with one of his buddies about how the test is going and what time he thinks he’ll make it to the bar.
Then, evidently not realizing that his conversation had been overheard by all, he comes back into the room and says, “Sorry, it was really important, but it won’t happen again.”
“No,” I reply, holding out my hand for his phone, “It won’t.” But at this point in the day, I’m feeling impatient, intolerant, and even a teeny bit vicious. So, with a straight face, I add, “In revenge for the interruption, I passed your test around to the rest of the class and allowed them each to change one answer. You might want to take the time to review their answers…”
I hadn’t, of course, but the two minutes of panic it caused him made me feel a bit better.
On more than one occasion, I’ve found myself mystified by student behavior during exams. I mean, who actually thinks it is o.k. to take a phone call, any phone call but especially a social call, during an exam?!?!?!
Once, a few years back, I was giving a three hour final exam. During the exam, I had to step out of the classroom and have a conversation with a student who had finished their test about some work they needed to do. When I had finished, I stepped back into the classroom to find the six people still working on their exams deep in conversation with each other.
One of the students looks up at me and says, “Oh, we’re just taking a chat break! We’ll get back to work in a few more minutes.”
A “chat break”??????????????????????????????????? You don’t get to stop and exam and have a cocktail party! But there they were, sitting around, ostensibly discussing motorcycles…
AFTER THE EXAM
O.K., I’m going to cut this short, having relieved my feelings, with one final story. This is my all time favorite post-exam email.
Upon receiving a grade that she didn’t find agreeable, one of my students emailed me and said:
“Dear Elizabeth, When I got my exam back, I was shocked to discover how low my grade was! I really enjoy this class and I feel my grade should reflect that. I would like to meet with you to discuss how we could raise my grade to better reflect the enjoyment I have for the class.”
So, first of all, a bit of context. I was just a lowly teaching assistant for the class in question, and so spent most of my time in the back of the classroom keeping an eye on the students from behind.
Tip—For those of you who are/will be teaching assistants, you may look like you are setting a good example by sitting in the front row, but if you sit in the back behind all your students, you’ll learn a great deal more about them. For those of you who are still students, if your TA is sitting in the back row, watch what you have on your computer screen. She CAN see it!
So there I was in the back of the classroom. The student in question rarely came to class, and when she did, she sat in the back row, hooked her computer into the wireless internet, and spent her time surfing the web. Her exam grade was the lowest in the class, and I wasn’t surprised by this at all.
I simply emailed her back and said that I really didn’t have the “power” to change her grade and suggested she speak with the professor, but what I REALLY wanted to write back was something along the lines of:
Dear Student, I really enjoy baseball, but the Red Sox won’t be calling me to pitch any time soon. Enjoyment does not equal skill, ability, or hard work.”
I enjoy the class so therefore I should get an A???? Is that really how this generation works????
Sigh….
O.K., done venting about students…
In other news, I’m frantically getting ready to leave Mexico. I’ve got 13 days before I head out for a four night/five day vacation on the Pacific Coast beaches (Merry Christmas to me!!!). From there, I start the drive home, or to Long Island anyway. Things have been very, VERY busy here because I have to get all the things I need to study into some sort of digital format. I’ve done pretty well, though I’m still trying to finish up a few things.
But so far, I’ve catalogued nearly 20,000 artifacts and written the first chapter of my dissertation. There are another 35,000 or so, but I’ve hired somebody to finish those for me and send the data in the coming months. I’m trying to learn and internalize the idea that I can’t actually do everything completely by myself. It has been rough going at times, but I’m getting better about it!
That is pretty much it (or all and more than I have time for…). At the moment, I have no life. Other than leaving once a week for exams, I sit at home and count artifacts...
Speaking of, I should get back to work counting and photographing tiny bits of things. If you have time for a vacation this spring, come for a visit in the Hamptons. I’ve found a beautiful house to live in on the water in Sag Harbor. And if you were sad to miss out on a chance for a vacation in Mexico, come stay with me here next summer! I’ll be teaching an interdisciplinary course on the Mexican Hacienda next June, and then using July and August to put the finishing touches on the final draft of my dissertation (I hope….).
And other stories from the trenches….
O.K., so admittedly, I was, am, will forever be, a neurotic, compulsive nerd. Still, I find myself completely speechless at the “excuses” and “solutions” I hear from students around exam time. I refuse to believe that I ever sat in a classroom with people who came up with stories like I’ve been fielding this week, but perhaps I’m just in denial? The department chair at the University here claims it is a generational thing. She says that nobody over thirty can relate to the students we have now. I really don’t want this to be true. I want to believe it is this bunch, or me, or the class, or the culture, or something. Or maybe just that I’m not over thirty…
Down here in Mexico, we’re finishing up our semester. (I taught a course in historical archaeology this semester for the anthropology department…) My class had their final exams last week, and the excuses started at 9.30 the morning of the exam. For those of you reading this who are still students, or will be students again, I thought I’d give a rundown of things not to say to your professors before, during or after an exam. For the rest of you? Think of it as encouragement to increase your contributions to your retirement funds! Because if this is truly generational, the social security system is doomed!
Also, there are more updates below… I just need to get this off my chest first!
So here it goes…
BEFORE EXAM
In an email…
“Dear Professor, I’ve just discovered that the project I’ve been working on for another professor isn’t good enough. I’m going to skip the final exam tonight so that I can work on that instead. I’m busy tomorrow, but I’m free Friday morning. Let me know what time Friday morning between 9 and 12 is good for you, and where I should meet you. I will take the exam then…”
Silly me… I was operating under this ridiculous delusion that universities and professors set the time and date of exams! I guess this really is a learning process! Thank god my student clued me in to this early, or I might have spent my whole career trying to make students take exams at hours that were inconvenient to them!
For those still in school… This email will not win you points. Especially if you send it at an hour that means it will be the first thing your professor sees in the morning when she wakes up before she has had her coffee. I promise you, this isn’t a pretty time of day for anybody involved. You might want to moderate your tone a bit. If you don’t, you will receive a response that sums up as:
“You are welcome to miss the exam tonight and take a zero. Have a nice day and good luck with that other project.”
My day went rapidly downhill from there…
I have/had this student who stopped coming to class eight weeks ago, give or take a month. I wasn’t particularly worried about it because I’ve seen him around campus, most notably sitting in the courtyard in front of the classroom half an hour before class time and directly in front of my office. I figured, “Well, he dropped the class. No biggie. I mean he is here and he could come to class, or tell me if there is a problem, right?”
Wrong.
Beauty tip, guys… If you are going to skip class, don’t sit on the bench located halfway between the professor’s office and her classroom. She actually does notice!
This student, who I hadn’t spoken with in eight weeks and who’d missed not only eight weeks of classes but three class assignments in the interim, comes to my office 30 minutes before exam time. He sits down in the chair across from my desk and proceeds to launch into a series of vague excuses. Evidently, he had “some things to take care of” that had prevented him from coming to class “a couple times,” and “maybe missing an assignment or two?” And he knew the exam was that day and clearly “didn’t feel prepared to take it.”
Clearly.
Luckily, he had a solution!
They always have solutions…
Since grades weren’t due for two weeks, he cheerfully explained to me, he thought that what we could do is have private classes in the meantime. He’d come to my office, and I would summarize eight weeks of exams for him and when we were finished, he’d take the exam then!
And the assignments he’d missed! Well, obviously, he couldn’t be expected to DO them, but he was pretty sure we could “work something out that would be agreeable to both of us…”
Uh huh…
Oh where to start!?!?!?!?
O.K., so here is the thing. What I do, IT IS WORK. Like real work. I actually spend time preparing lectures and putting together slides. The assignments I give you? They are actually also work for me, and so I give them sparingly and for a reason. Going to class? I don’t always want to go either. Sometimes, it is really, really inconvenient. And when I’m not in class? I’m actually doing other work, work that is more important than your hangover last week.
I promise you. You will NEVER win points with your professor by suggesting that instead of holding you accountable for the work you should have done and the classes you should have gone to, she instead shows up and spends time giving you lectures one on one. This isn’t a good deal for anybody but you. This is just extra work that she has to do to make your life easier. She never asked for it.
Remember, please, that you are trying to make the life of the person who gives you your grades more difficult. Is this EVER a winning strategy?
After staring in disbelief over the audacity of the whole thing, I finally just smiled and said, “As I see it, you have two options at the moment. 1. you can drop the class. 2. you can take the test or not, but fail the class regardless. It is your call.”
He tried to argue the point, telling me that he couldn’t drop any more classes (has already dropped the max limited allowed by the university before they kick you out) and that he couldn’t afford to fail my class either. I told him this wasn’t my problem to fix, it was his, and I wished him the best of luck resolving the issue.
DURING EXAM
Walking into the exam, I foolishly thought that I was done with the “drama,” and that we would be able to settle down to business. With this level of naiveté, you’d never know I’ve either been taking or giving exams for ten years straight now!
I hand out the exam, the students settle in to take it after the usual expressions of dismay over the difficulty of the test. Halfway through the test, somebody’s phone rings. My cross to bear yells, “S**T!” and leaps out of his chair while frantically digging through his bag. Instead of just turning off the phone, as I was expecting him to do, he announces to the class, “I’ve got to take this…” and, before I can say anything, runs, at top speed, out of the room.
The students and I look at each other in disbelief while he stands right outside the door of the classroom and has a loud and completely audible conversation with one of his buddies about how the test is going and what time he thinks he’ll make it to the bar.
Then, evidently not realizing that his conversation had been overheard by all, he comes back into the room and says, “Sorry, it was really important, but it won’t happen again.”
“No,” I reply, holding out my hand for his phone, “It won’t.” But at this point in the day, I’m feeling impatient, intolerant, and even a teeny bit vicious. So, with a straight face, I add, “In revenge for the interruption, I passed your test around to the rest of the class and allowed them each to change one answer. You might want to take the time to review their answers…”
I hadn’t, of course, but the two minutes of panic it caused him made me feel a bit better.
On more than one occasion, I’ve found myself mystified by student behavior during exams. I mean, who actually thinks it is o.k. to take a phone call, any phone call but especially a social call, during an exam?!?!?!
Once, a few years back, I was giving a three hour final exam. During the exam, I had to step out of the classroom and have a conversation with a student who had finished their test about some work they needed to do. When I had finished, I stepped back into the classroom to find the six people still working on their exams deep in conversation with each other.
One of the students looks up at me and says, “Oh, we’re just taking a chat break! We’ll get back to work in a few more minutes.”
A “chat break”??????????????????????????????????? You don’t get to stop and exam and have a cocktail party! But there they were, sitting around, ostensibly discussing motorcycles…
AFTER THE EXAM
O.K., I’m going to cut this short, having relieved my feelings, with one final story. This is my all time favorite post-exam email.
Upon receiving a grade that she didn’t find agreeable, one of my students emailed me and said:
“Dear Elizabeth, When I got my exam back, I was shocked to discover how low my grade was! I really enjoy this class and I feel my grade should reflect that. I would like to meet with you to discuss how we could raise my grade to better reflect the enjoyment I have for the class.”
So, first of all, a bit of context. I was just a lowly teaching assistant for the class in question, and so spent most of my time in the back of the classroom keeping an eye on the students from behind.
Tip—For those of you who are/will be teaching assistants, you may look like you are setting a good example by sitting in the front row, but if you sit in the back behind all your students, you’ll learn a great deal more about them. For those of you who are still students, if your TA is sitting in the back row, watch what you have on your computer screen. She CAN see it!
So there I was in the back of the classroom. The student in question rarely came to class, and when she did, she sat in the back row, hooked her computer into the wireless internet, and spent her time surfing the web. Her exam grade was the lowest in the class, and I wasn’t surprised by this at all.
I simply emailed her back and said that I really didn’t have the “power” to change her grade and suggested she speak with the professor, but what I REALLY wanted to write back was something along the lines of:
Dear Student, I really enjoy baseball, but the Red Sox won’t be calling me to pitch any time soon. Enjoyment does not equal skill, ability, or hard work.”
I enjoy the class so therefore I should get an A???? Is that really how this generation works????
Sigh….
O.K., done venting about students…
In other news, I’m frantically getting ready to leave Mexico. I’ve got 13 days before I head out for a four night/five day vacation on the Pacific Coast beaches (Merry Christmas to me!!!). From there, I start the drive home, or to Long Island anyway. Things have been very, VERY busy here because I have to get all the things I need to study into some sort of digital format. I’ve done pretty well, though I’m still trying to finish up a few things.
But so far, I’ve catalogued nearly 20,000 artifacts and written the first chapter of my dissertation. There are another 35,000 or so, but I’ve hired somebody to finish those for me and send the data in the coming months. I’m trying to learn and internalize the idea that I can’t actually do everything completely by myself. It has been rough going at times, but I’m getting better about it!
That is pretty much it (or all and more than I have time for…). At the moment, I have no life. Other than leaving once a week for exams, I sit at home and count artifacts...
Speaking of, I should get back to work counting and photographing tiny bits of things. If you have time for a vacation this spring, come for a visit in the Hamptons. I’ve found a beautiful house to live in on the water in Sag Harbor. And if you were sad to miss out on a chance for a vacation in Mexico, come stay with me here next summer! I’ll be teaching an interdisciplinary course on the Mexican Hacienda next June, and then using July and August to put the finishing touches on the final draft of my dissertation (I hope….).
Below is the draft of the brochure for the course I'm going to teach. If you know anybody who is interested, send them to me for more info on how to sign up! (That part hasn't been written on the brochure yet, hence the "blah, blah, blah...") It'll be a six credit course transferable to the states. Taught in English, but the fieldwork will be in Spanish...
1 comment:
This stories are almost unbelievable except that I've known students with the same bewildering sense of entitlement. Maybe you should publish them along with your dissertation...ha
-caro
Post a Comment