Ah, yes, the end of the semester! The time when doom finally falls upon all students. Just like Santa, I know when you've been bad or good, and many students are writing e-mails to me because they've just gotten coal in their stocking.
Here is a sampling of some of the student complaints. Some are from this semester, and some are from previous semesters, but all have lodged in my memory:
Q: Why didn't I get an A in this class?
Me: Uuuh, because I gave you a D.
Q: But why didn't I get an A?
Me: Because your grade was between an F and a D, and I decided to be merciful and give you the D.
Q: But why didn't I get an A?
Me: The highest grade you got on any assignment was a C-! Why would you think you were getting an A?
Q: (after a long silence while he mulled this over) ... I know that, but why didn't I get an A?
Q: I had an A- average! How come I flunked?
Me: You had an A- on the one assignment you turned in. You didn't turn anything else in all semester.
Q: See? You know if I had turned in those other assignments, I'd have gotten A's on them too, so you should give me an A.
Q: How come I flunked the class? I was passing!
Me: Because you missed six weeks of class. The syllabus says that you can only miss two weeks.
Q: What?! You were serious about that?!
Q: I just looked at the final grades, and saw that I got an F. I was wondering if there was anything I could do to make it up.
Me: Who are you?
Q: I'm John Doe. I'm in your English class.
Me: Which one?
Q: The English class.
Me: All my classes are English classes. Which one were you in?
Q: Uh ... freshman writing, I think?
Me: Which section?
Q: Uh....
Me: Nevermind, let me look through all my rosters .... Ah, yes, here you are, John Doe. According to this, you only attended the first two classes, and turned in no assignments.
Q: Yeah, so I was wondering, is there any extra credit or anything I can do?
And so on ... of course, another favorite is a variation on the last one, when at the end we discover that the student was in a different professor's class.
Soon to come -- memorable student bribes!
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Oh, OUCH!
ReplyDeleteWhy oh why do students think that an "extra credit" assignment will make up for a whole semester of missed work? And then they imagine the extra credit assignment as something that will take a maximum of seven minutes to finish. Frustrating!
Student bribes, eh? Who would do such a thing!
ReplyDeleteBecoming Charlemagne = automatic A?
ReplyDeleteYou stole my thunder, Nokes. I was about to write the same blog.
ReplyDeleteWhen I catch you in the lounge and/or parking lot, you're going down.
You should tell them that all extra credit assignments must equal at least 200 pages of original work in Times New Roman 12 pt. font and 1 inch margins all around.
ReplyDeleteWhat students will do for grades! You should think about that for a bit :)
ReplyDeleteMatt