Monday, April 13, 2009

enough

Dear students,

News flash: I don't care why you didn't come to class yesterday, or the day before, or the day before, unless you have a doctor's note you'd like me to use to excuse your absences. I don't care about whatever technological melt-down prevented you from turning in your homework. I don't care how sick your roommate's cousin's cat is. All I care about is that you a.) show up, b.) do the work, and c.) don't waste my time on some elaborate excuse as to why you failed to do a.) or b.). It's embarrassing for both of us.

Even saying that I care about a.), b.) and c.) would be overstating things. Really, all I care about is c.). It really doesn't affect me one way or the other if you fail my class, unless it's due to me not holding up my end of the educational bargain. Since I know that this is not the case, I'm just not losing sleep over it. My job is to provide you with resources and opportunities that will facilitate your learning. Your job is to avail yourself of those resources and opportunities. At most, your failure to do your job inconveniences me in the extent to which it infringes upon the time and energy I should be devoting to doing my job (hint: the less infringement here, the better).

It may come as a surprise to you that my personal opinion of you has nothing to do with the grade you will receive, and as a consequence your reason for dropping the ball will have little bearing on the outcome. Unless you can prove to me that the fates have aligned against you - which happens to us all at times - your reasons for dropping the ball or how nice a person you are will, in fact, have no bearing whatsoever on the grade I give you. If you choose to try to prove to me that the fates have aligned against you, you better be ready to bring it.

Student A: I'm sorry your boyfriend is in the hospital. But Jason so-and-so could be your eighth cousin twice removed as far as I know, and even if I accept that he is, in fact, your boyfriend, I fail to see how his emergency room visit last week should excuse your absences for roughly half the semester.

Student B: I can't figure out how the university's network could so maliciously hide the two web-based assignments you swear you did (out of the four I assigned), considering that I can see all the work that everyone else did without a single problem. Don't think that the growing complexity of your excuse (you can see it when you log in, etc.) will prevent me from frog-marching you down to the computer lab to show me what the network evidently can't. Tell me, exactly how far would you like to take this?

Student C: You were notified of today's assignment two weeks ago, during two consecutive class periods of which you attended neither. When you attempted to find an online copy so that you could start the work this afternoon before class, you learned there wasn't any. Moreover, I failed to bring hard copies of the assignment I administered fully two weeks ago and, since I had heard nothing to the contrary until today, THE DUE DATE, assumed you knew about. You have five classes. I have nearly a hundred students. At any given moment, a dozen or so of these students have some contingency going on (some legitimate, others not at all) that desperately needs my special consideration. Tell me, whose job do you think it is to make sure you know what's going on?

I will not claim to be the world's most organized and responsible person. Far from it. Nonetheless, it is now my job to instill in you all a spirit of accountability for your own actions, and this is one responsibility I take very seriously.

Whatever you think, it's not me you're mad at right now.