Wednesday, December 06, 2006

End of Term Follies

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!

6 comments:

  1. Oh, OUCH!

    Why 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!

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  2. Anonymous8:37 PM

    Student bribes, eh? Who would do such a thing!

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  3. Becoming Charlemagne = automatic A?

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  4. You stole my thunder, Nokes. I was about to write the same blog.

    When I catch you in the lounge and/or parking lot, you're going down.

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  5. 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.

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  6. Anonymous1:08 AM

    What students will do for grades! You should think about that for a bit :)
    Matt

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