Attack of the tentative toe-dippers

Toward the end of the first week of class a student came up to me at the end of a class and asked me to sign his drop slip. He had done the reading assignment and actively participated in class discussion, but as soon as the discussion was over, he handed me a drop slip. Why do the work and sit through the whole class if you know you're to drop it anyway? "It doesn't fit in my schedule," he said, "but I like the topic so I wanted to try it out."

This is the toe-dipping student, the one who comes to one or two classes to see whether he likes the reading or can handle the writing. These students are auditioning me for the professorial role in the piece, and sometimes I don't make the cut. This leads to a certain fluidity in enrollments.


Two of my classes have remained stable all semester: an upper-level film class mostly full of English majors (who know what they need) and a writing class required for all freshman honors students (who have no other option). My two general education literature courses, on the other hand, have featured a very fluid roster: each day, I face a slightly different sea of faces.

This semester the problem of late adds has been especially acute because a colleague in another department had to cancel a class because of illness, leaving a handful of students with too few credits to graduate. These students received an extra week to add classes, which is why I had new students showing up for the first time in my Concepts of Comedy class yesterday. We've already read Lysistrata and Love's Labor's Lost and we have drafts due on Thursday and an exam coming up: how will these students possibly get caught up? I don't intend to re-teach the first two weeks of class!

Now we're in the middle of the third week of the semester and I hope the rosters have stabilized. But wait--one student has missed a whole week because of an injury and another has been out with food poisoning. How long is this boat going to wait at the dock for everyone to board? It's time to pull up the gangplank and head off to sea, even if that means leaving behind some indecisive toe-dippers.