To students of my seriously ill colleague: Trust me, your professor is in no condition to respond to emails demanding instant information about your grade, and acting as if he got sick on purpose just to inconvenience you isn't going to help him recover.
To a student confused about what "revision" means: I started reading the revised draft you sent me but it immediately became apparent that you hadn't revised any of the problem areas I marked on the earlier draft, including such simple issues as incorrect spelling of place names. Surely you're not asking me to mark all those errors a second time, right? So why don't you go ahead and revise in response to my previous feedback before asking for more?
To the most non-responsive class I've ever encountered: Honestly, I could stand in front of the room and offer a hundred-dollar bill to the first person who speaks, and I wouldn't be a penny poorer by the end of the class. If you're so terrified of wrong answers that you can't risk saying a single word all semester long, and if you perceive every friendly attempt to elicit responses as intimidation, then I hope you someday own a restaurant that gets reamed out by Gordon Ramsay so you can see what real intimidation looks like.
To the student who educated me: I confess that I initially perceived you as a big dumb lunk, but you've shown such an eagerness to learn, a willingness to take risks, and a persistence in the face of difficulties that I'll be reluctant in the future to dismiss anyone on the basis of a poor first impression.
To my students preparing final papers and exams: Go ahead and panic if you have to, but do it quickly--set aside five minutes for a full-on panic attack so that you can get it over with and move on. Hit something soft that won't hit back, or run around campus waving your arms and yelling all the names you'd like to call your professors--whatever you have to do to get the negative energy out of your system. Then sit down and do all the things that stand between you and a successful completion of the semester, because winter break is on the way and we all want you to get there in one piece.
1 comment:
When I have students revise, I ask them to turn in a copy of the marked up paper, and on the new version, to highlight changes. Then I hold them side by side, and can easily tell if they've revised meaningfully or not.
And, happily, it's easy to help them see how little they've sometimes done.
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