This is the time of the year when my students begin sending desperate emails at 2 am, meeting me at my office at 7:30 am, telling me sad stories and asking for special favors. This is the time of the year when I get to share these emails and stories with you, dear readers.
But not this quarter. This quarter I have a great class. It is large, as per usual, but filled with older ("nontraditional") students, honors students, ROTC students, and so forth. The final grade distribution looks to be massively asymmetric: negatively skewed. I have a discussion board where students can leave anonymous suggestions on how to improve the class; not one such message has been posted. Few students have come to office hours; the few visits I've had were for advice on how to apply class material in honors projects and other academic pursuits.
If every class were like this, I wouldn't be buying those powerball tickets.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
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5 comments:
I love this blog! I've placed you on my blog roll.
When I start to feel like this, I check to make sure none of my students have spiked my coffee with hallucinogens. As a doctoral graduate from LSU I rarely had the honor of teaching good students there, so you're lucky, savor it.
I gave a talk to the honors students at my elite liberal arts college. They were the rudest kids I've taught in years. Sometimes I long for the simpler Square State Hat-On-Backwards (HOBs) crowd.
Then I realize that someone has spiked my Dunkin' Donuts w/ some anticholinergic when my fountain pen tries to tell me to shave my cat.
Hooray! I live for classes/students like those. Glad to know you got a good bunch for once. :-)
I posted three posts in a row today about making grades in my bad classes and then I went to my good class. Discussion actually yielded a Research Insight. As in, I see how to fix my article mss., which is finished according to me, but which I know does not bow in enough directions to be Fully Publishable, and now I see how to make those bows without obfuscating my point.
This is amazing. Class almost *never* yields me Research Insights. I almost feel like one of those professors who list discussions in their classes in the acknowledgments sections of their books.
Is this what makes teaching all worth it sometimes? I am happy to hear that you have such an awesome class.
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