- Week 2: Hello! I am a student in your stats class. I have been very sick this week and missed both lectures. I know I have missed a lot but I was curious if there was any way I could talk to you and you could fill me in on what I missed or something like that. Please get back with me and let me know what I need to do. Thank you!!!
- Week 3: I never recieved a syllabus because I was late the first day and I asked someone in class and he said it was on-line and that you did not pass one out??? I couldn't find it on-line anywhere. I am very sorry for the inconvienence, but I had to go to court on the day of the quiz!!! I can show you some documentation if you need me to. I am very sorry about all this. Thank you.
- Week 5: Hello, I am in your statistics class. I emailed you about how i had to be in court so i could not take the first quiz. I frankly forgot about it until today when we took the second quiz. I think i still have my proof that shows i needed to be in court if you need to see it. I was wondering if there was any way I can somehow make it up. Please get back with me sometime soon. Thank you very much.
- Week 6: Hello, I was wondering if I could stop in your office sometime and give you my proof that I had to miss the first quiz to be in court. I also wanted to talk to you about the class. Please let me know when a good time would be. I could do any time tomorrow, thursday, or friday after 3:00. Thank you very much!
- Week 8: Hello, I emailed you a while ago about wanting to come in and see you. I need to talk with you about making up the first quiz because I have an excuse for not being there and I had a question or two about some of the information that was on the second midterm. Please get back with me with a time I can come in and see you. I am done after 3:00 every day. Thank you very much
- Week 10: I am in your statistics class and I had talked to you about an excuse for missing the first quiz. You said you would excuse this quiz and average the grades for the last two quizzes. I just realized that I missed the second one because I was sick and the third one I was late to class because my alarm did not go off and so I missed that one too. I know I am very close to a D and was wondering what could be done. Please get back with me. It has been a very crazy quarter for me and there have been a lot of changes going on and it has affected my school work. I am sorry about all of this but thank you for you help.
You make the call! What was Claire's final statistics grade?
13 comments:
AP-
Based on your earlier writings, I have assumed that you knew Claire's performance on Quizzes 2&3 before offering the dispensation on Quiz 1. Right?
:^)
Ah, to be so cruelly judged! No, I actually excused the quiz in Week 8, and discussed with Claire how, since she had waited so long to resolve the matter, we had no other option but to reweight the remaining quizzes to compensate. She had, at the time of our discussion, already missed the second quiz but neglected to inform me of that fact.
My guess is she's somewhere in D-to-F Land.
And I have soooo many students whose week-by-week e-mails look just like hers...so beggy and pitiful. I'm going to use "Claire's" awful messages in my fall comp classes.
Your blog cracks me up and helps me stay sane as I near Complete Career Burnout/Student-Strangling Mode. Thanks, AP!
She's a solid F. She no doubt is having boyfriend/family/roommate problems that need explaining at length to Angry Professor, perhaps supplemented by tears. I also suspect that sorority obligations have been weighing heavily on her mind, so she's needed to go drinking most evenings to escape them.
Tell us the rest of Claire's story and her final grade.
Old fart professor
It has been a very crazy quarter for me and there have been a lot of changes going on and it has affected my school work.
[sigh] I have some sympathy for this girl because I do remember at that age how things sometimes felt like they were spinning out of control. But I also recognize that since then, students have grown more comfortable exagerating the scale of their problems to cover for laziness and forgetfulness.
But I do wonder why they elways seem to think it will work? Surely you're not the only prof they're pulling this shit with? Does it work with others?
F for Fraudulent. Or D for Disturbingly naive. I can't decide.
It gets to a point where, even if you reweight and excuse stuff, the work she does turn in won't be much beyond D-level. I'm guessing "claire" flakes on some final assignment and doesn't even make 50%.
There's only so much re-weighting and help you can give.
Did she fail spectacularly??
The cutoff for a D was 60%. She got a 59.43%. I gave her a D so that I didn't have to deal with additional whiny emails. This class is required for the major, so she needed to get at least a C-. I'll see her again.
At least she used the word "affected" properly.
One holds on to what one can.
Oh, I wish you'd given her an F!!
I had a student who all semester sent me the kinds of emails that suggested she was going to file a formal complaint at the end of the semester. Things like, "as per my email yesterday evening, I would like to discuss my absence with you in person. Since you did not reply last night, I am emailing you again this morning to request an appointment." Sure enough, at the end of the semester she had earned a D, and there was an official complaint that I hadn't graded her fairly. When I failed to respond to her complaining email within 12 hours (over a weekend, after the semester was over), she made an appointment with my department chair. I called him the morning before her appointment to explain the situation, and the chair said, "it's totally up to you, I don't interfere with instructor autonomy in these matters." So I told her, no dice. Then the chair emails me and says, "after meeting her, I think there may be grounds for a hardship consideration." (FUCKER.) So I "rethought" and told her she could rewrite the final paper, but I was not going to just raise her grade without that.
She never rewrote the paper, of course.
I hate those students so, so much.
D, in schools like mine and apparently yours. F would mean more dealing with her, possibly chair, etc., and there are just too many students, and too much else to do. And D's don't graduate.
Clearly she's too busy to pass the class, no?
I might have been tempted to have one of those seemingly friendly / advisor-type e-mail conversations with her in which I explain that not everyone's life is such that they can do well in school and that if she needed to withdraw from the course, I would understand... i.e. I can see you don't have your poop in a group and you aren't likely to pass the class, so get out now before you fail... That way you have the warning in e-mail and she can't say she didn't know.
Post a Comment