I had one student this past quarter who, because of a family emergency, could not take the final and so received an incomplete. It is probably not too surprising that this student was struggling in the class and would not have done well on the final even if exigent circumstances had not arisen. I find that the better students would rather take their exams and get them out of the way, early even, rather than leave their coursework unfinished, regardless of their personal disasters. I had a student last year who was being shipped overseas to the war, and he took his final three weeks early rather than take an incomplete.
My struggling student has now contacted me (via email) to take her final and resolve her incomplete. However, her inquiries into how best to resolve the matter are a little strange. Rather than, "When can I take my final?" she asks, "When do I have to have my incomplete resolved by?" Refusing to play into this (guidelines about incompletes are easily found online), I instead responded (cheerily), "Come in and take your final any time! Are you free this afternoon?"
Something tells me she won't be in touch for a while. Should I be astonished that she has not spent the past two months studying for her final? Or that she's in no rush to start studying now?
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
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11 comments:
I've found that the conscientious students always rise above their emergencies. I had a student come in and see me before he went home for his dad's surprise funeral. The students who miss all the time are the ones who then have a "crisis" and can't take the test. Grrrr.
To answer the question "How is your summer goinng?":
This is my first summer where it was not flanked by school on either side, and therefor feels rather, unsummer like.
Thanks for asking!
It always makes me sad to hear professors excoriate students who fall behind in their coursework; they assume that "laziness" or "procrastination" as a rule denote bad character and treat such students with contempt. The learning process is delicate and complex, and if undertaken correctly can prompt a great deal of fear and self-doubt, which sometimes manifest themselves as a stubborn reticence to buckle down. Sometimes the most "conscientious" students--those who in their hearts take their educations very seriously, i.e., who do not merely view it as a set of requirements to be fulfilled in preparation for the Job in the Real World--are the most subject to feelings of fear and self-doubt. Procrastination should not be condoned, but a little compassion on a professor's part--the patience not to rush to judgment and instead to find out exactly what is going on with the student--might open the doors for a genuine learning experience: for the student AND the professor.
Face it: in the grand scheme of things, your exam is not particularly important, nor is it a true measure of any student's aptitudes--particularly in statistics for aspirants to the social sciences (trust me; I know: I was horrendous in statistics in school but if I do say so myself I have blossomed into a darned good clinical psychologist). Why teach if you can't hold on to a faith that all of us--student and professor alike--sincerely do try to do the very best we can at any given moment? As a professor, you have the power entrusted to you to help students unlock what is inside them; you are at THEIR service, not the other way around. This does not mean that you should not provide clear expectations for your course and uphold high standards. But "high standards" ought to be much more than taking an exam on the designated date and passing it, neither of which, in this day and age in education, are badges of intellectual rigor. Not acting to fulfill their potential is punishment enough for students (for all of us); no one needs the vociferous condemnation of someone so, so, so much more powerful than they are, as a professor (temporarily) is so much more powerful than any of their students. Watch how you use that power.
Sorry for such a long and vehement comment. It's just that I work with adolescents and I cannot tell you how many times a day I am visited with sobbing students, terrified of failing this or that exam, feeling like failures, feeling stupid, feeling terrified about their futures to the point of being utterly debilitated. Some students DO manage to surmount family emergencies and the like and they ace their exams...but such a behavior alone cannot designate those students as automatically the superior ones. Surely we all know by now that good grades have very little to do with real intellect or potential to succeed. Your job is to TEACH, not to police. What is it to you, personally, if the student you mention never takes your exam?
Enough; again, sorry so long.
While Angry Professor and others will likely post a more thorough, thoughtful response to your post, Anonymous, I would like to answer certain questions, particularly, "what is it to you?"
A student who takes the INC, particularly one given to flurries of doubt, confusion, procrastination or just not caring because our class isn't so important int the grand scheme of things will often take to caring once the INC will lapse into an F in which case we are besieged by their concerns (and frequently, their posted schedules of availability) at a time when we are dealing with our responsibilities to serving the students of the present term. Or we find angry emails or get followed on campus, demanding our immediate attention to something they let lapse themselves. Getting these things out of the way is the way to go.
As a professional psychologist, it must be nice to be in a position where you engage with clients on a one on one basis, or in a small group if you also do group. We often teach courses that are increasingly packed, and thus we cannot sit patiently or seek out each individual and try every which way to unlock the goodness of a student who fails to show up or do the work. They have to come in for this alchemy to take place.
Moreover, as a psychologist, you might wish to consider that such rants come out of the sting of trying to accomplish this magic, to work, and to tend to problem students, seeking out ways to engage them or put them at ease, only to find that there is little that can be done, especially as they have determined that this doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
And sadly, if only they felt it didn't matter. Instead, it is becoming all too commmon to be besieged by messages from the student complaining about whatever grade was finally assigned.
What it is to us, or at least some of us, dear psychologist, is a great deal of emotional energy and actual adminsitrative time dedicated to a student who opted not to make the most of our hours of business (when we are there to service the student) but instead angrily demand responses within hours, or follow profs into the bathroom (as has been discussed on other blogs).
Yes, there are anxious students, and it is humbling when I deal with them (I remember the first time I saw a student shaking as he asked me a question, and it was a shock, and I did all could to put him at ease and assure him that I was there for him) but there are so many others who have adopted the consumer model you espouse in your comment.In this model, we are responsible for their satisfaction and they bear little of that responsibility.
If it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things, I would breathe a sigh of relief, but sometimes I get the feeling that part of my job is to prepare citizens, and that can leave one demoralized and given to rants. At least me.
I have ranted enough, particularly given that there will be another that is more insightful and articulate. Certainly more on point.
I may have left out that not only am I different anonymous from Anonymous Psych, but a point, at least for me:
If I didn't care about students, I wouldn't experience the frustration that leads to rants.
Furthermore, it is crucial to recognize that what appears here in rant form is by not a web translation of how we treat our students. Having read a number of these, I find that it is the necessary outlet for these mounting frustrations. And it provides a community wherein we discover these shared experiences and sentiments, and can advise each other.
Or so I think, because, as I said, I don't have a blog.
You can a tell those who don't (and possibly can't) teach from those who do.
I used to bend over backward for students whose sudden crises prevented them from turning in essays and taking final exams, and they all fell short every time, pretty much without exception. Students who would come to office hours every time they were scheduled and would stay for up to six additional hours with me each week because they needed sooooo much help and needed soooooo badly to pass suddenly disappeared when the final paper was actually due. The student who pleaded and begged with me for another chance (though she had missed 12 class sessions and 3 is the department's limit for failure) would then skip a couple more classes and show up late to a few others. It seems like, the ones who need the extra carrying (not help; carrying) and don't find their support outside their instructors are the ones who are the most likely to fall short when the proverbial piper comes calling for his due. Accordingly, I don't give incompletes, and I don't talk with students about their grades over the summer. I teach a lot of introductory courses and I prefer to assign work using deadlines, so it would take a lot to make me change my mind about that.
Courseloads nowadays are staggering. I teach about 120 students each semester--crippling because the limit for each each class is ideally 20, and I have to take on 30 in the writing courses and 35 in my Humanities courses. Managing that many students and making sure that they get what they need takes more than a bit of goodwill. It also takes the strength to set the bar high. Those that can't do the work, and want to piddle around, won't do it, and I won't carry them.
These are adults. Instead of allowing them to blame everything around them when they fail, it's about time that they take responsibility for not fulfilling their end of the bargain (that they set when they agreed to stay for the duration of the semester, and yes, my students must sign one). When you let them taste failure, students sometimes get a little smarter about what it takes to get a college degree--something a little more than student loans and a fancy notebook. My advice is usually something like this: Get over your pique at me, at your grade, at your life. You're not a bad person, or even a bad student, just because you got an F in the class. Take the course again in the following semester. Pass it. Move on.
It's "Anonymous Psychologist", returning to comment upon the reactions of Anonymous and Writing Teacher to my earlier comment. First of all, let me confess that in fact I am not a psychologist but a graduate student in English. Although I stand by everything I said under my invented identity, I thought I could avoid the *possibility* of being derogated as the whiny-student "Other" in the crossfire of frustrated professors. Also, at one time I seriously considered pursuing a clinical psychology Ph.D. because among other reasons I love to work with people, but I chose to pursue a career in the Humanities instead...and sometimes, such as when I encounter blog after blog of (mostly) justifiably frustrated Ph.D.-bestowed academics, I wonder whether I made the best choice. So, now all guises are stripped away; I'd be thrilled if you checked out my blog, http://academyofreaders.blogspot.com, for further proof.
It seems I gave the impression I espouse a "consumer model" of education, in which (loosely quoting Anonymous) the professoriate is responsible for students' satisfaction while students bear little responsibility for what they derive from their educations. No, no, no. I think students make a big mistake obviously in not showing up to classes or attempting to squeak by on minimal effort, and less obviously in trusting that passing requirements for a particular major automatically equates as "knowledge" or "know-how" in that subject. Such trust reflects a 'consumer model' of education that construes requirements for a degree as "packaging" students for the work force, be it more advanced work in academia or outside the University, in the Corporation (and is there really even a difference anymore?), a construal that perceives students as Coke bottles, as transparent, identical forms, to be filled with identical substance, sealed, and sold out into the world…and in turn, or commensurately, many students perceive their educations as claim to a certain intellectual “pedigree” or as an irksome but necessary rigamarole they must undergo in order to be in line for the big bucks or, if not that, to be in line with their peers. What I meant when I said that professors are at students' service, not the other way around, was simply that students do pay a considerable and often preposterous amount of money, often at great family and/or personal sacrifice, for a seat in their professors’ classes. It is the job of their professors to see to it that the classes meet at their scheduled time, that course material is well prepared and well delivered, that course syllabi and requirements are intelligibly compiled and distributed in the beginning of the course, that office hours are held, papers are carefully and respectfully read, commented upon, graded and returned within a reasonable amount of time, and that a concrete pedagogical goal underpins the course and is invoked consistently in order to push students to expand intellectually. It is the choice, not the job, of students to make the most of the opportunity to enroll in almost any course of their choosing in the school they attend. And of course there should be consequences for not deigning to show up for class enough even to objectively determine whether or not the class might actually be useful, for not studying, for procrastinating, etc. But how has it come to pass that the consequences most stringently imposed and most loudly lamented are in the category of failing the class, being placed on academic probation, not graduating on time or at all, etc.? Those pale in importance alongside the real consequence: that students won’t learn, not only the delicious smorgasbord of information available to them, but also the skill of how to learn, the art, the integrity of working to be able to do something they previously could not do. That is what I meant when I opined that in the grand scheme of things, Angry Professor’s exam does not “matter.” The prevalent model of education in this country, it seems, is the punitive model—in which grades, exams, and graduation requirements somehow mangle rather than facilitate efforts to teach and to learn. It is possible, I think, to eschew the punitive model without “coddling” or (in Writing Teacher’s words) “carrying” students—but to be fair I do not know how such a feat is possible when professors must operate within this model. It must require constant vigilance and unflagging idealism, exertions of energy that are difficult to sustain amidst an enormous teaching load, not to mention the pressures of research and personal life.
This comment is long, so I’m going to break it into chunks. “Part II” is below.
I've been excoriated on my blog for the same things that the first "anonymous" brings up here, so I feel compelled to point out that in practice, most of the decent teachers I know (and those who care enough about their work to blog their frustrations are generally very good teachers, as well as witty writers who can create an entertaining persona to kvetch about their frustrations) work very, very hard to distinguish between students who are having real psychological troubles or personal crises and those 'crisis mongers' for whom every hangnail is a legitimate reason to turn work in late.
It's incumbent upon us to find and help a student who's having a severe crisis, but it is also a part of our jobs (even when we wish it weren't so) to identify those who are unwilling to meet the basic standards of the course as they are defined, and to arrange the kind of consequences that can maybe help them to get with the program. We do it as a service to our fellow teachers, who will have to deal with the bullshit if these students get away with it in our classes; for our administrators, who are the next line of defense; for the other students who do the work and expect to be treated fairly (which is not always uniformly); for ourselves, so that we can uphold our integrity; and even for the flaky students, who may need to learn that college is not for them, or that they need another major, school, course, or life plan, or who might even be at the point where he or she is ready to figure out that a grade is just another consequence of work done and undone--not a final evaluation of their human worth--and that, as such, it should reflect the work they actually put into the course (not what they would have earned had they been able to come to class, pay attention, study for the test, etc.).
I do find more and more students who are dealing with crippling emotional and psychological issues--this scares me, inspires me to help them, makes me thankful for the counselors by whom I am surrounded, and reminds me to give all students the benefit of the doubt whenever possible in class. I reserve the right, however, to bitch about the flaky ones (anonymously, of course) in my blog. If that venting allows me to be more generous in my pedagogical life, then it's worth it.
I dislike the consumer model (mentioned above) but unfortunately it is the true model for many of us at small expensive colleges. When your raises are dependent upon student evaluations, and student evaluations are based upon student happiness, you cannot give low or failing grades or even not allow make-ups of final papers/exams. I've tried discouraging those who are clearly not doing the work or coming to class, but then they show up ONCE all semester (after starting a week late and only coming to two or three classes), on evaluation day, to sock it to you, though you've called them, e-mailed them and invited them to your office to work on difficulties... yet they've never turned in papers, and when they've come, they've come in late and then left to spend the remaining part of the class in the bathroom.. their voice-mail boxes are full, they never get their e-mails and their cars break down on the last day to turn in a drop form that they had and you signed...You try to believe the best of them, but how can you give a passing grade when they weren't there?
You can't--even if the risk is that they'll "sock it to you" on evaluation day. I don't know what I'd do if faced with your situation, Anonymous. I can't help but surmise that the "consumer model" of education as I defined it above is somehow the cause, in part, of such widespread student lackadaisicality, if only because when I was an undergrad at an Ivy, many, many students did the barest minimum to get by in their courses--and got away with it--and when I transferred to a small liberal arts college known for its progressive education, where there were few requirements; papers, presentations and projects in lieu of tests; and written evaluations in lieu of grades, eventually the pressure of the overt "it's really all up to you" got to most students, and they worked hard on their own steam rather than under the Damocles' sword of exams and GPA. It didn't work for everyone, of course....
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