UPDATE! Who's surprised?

Back in August I mentioned a student who had outed himself as someone who might not be one to put much effort into the class. I'm not saying that I pulled a Nostradamus here, but I'd just like to say that my prediction was correct. He received a 'D' in the class. Vegas would not have been giving odds on that one.

FYI

I'm not sure that there could be a more perfect story than Twilight. Sure, I understand the criticisms that the book is not the most well-written. But still. It's not the language that makes the book (although it's not as awful as some say); it's the story and the characters. Hoo boy, I love me some vampire/human love.

And, yes, I am over the age of 13.

The end of the semester is always fruitful

Student sends me this e-mail over the weekend:

"I was wondering if you could tell me what grades I received on the paper and journal article review."

Um, the student didn't turn in either of these assignments. I just really wonder what's going through her head before/during/after sending that e-mail. Did she honestly forget that she didn't turn those in? Or is she really thinking that sending that e-mail will imply that she turned in the assignments and it's my error that I don't have them in my possession? Given that she was absent on the day the latter assignment was due, I'm not sure her trickery would get very far with me.

Again!

Okay, I really have to stop responding to the limp noodle hand-raise.

Twice last week, I called on students who weren't raising their hands because I can't freaking tell. One of the student's hands really looked like it was raised and that one was particularly annoying. Since she stayed in that position after I called on her and she told me she didn't have her hand up, I asked the class to turn around and tell me if it looked like her hand up. Nothing better than getting the students to gang up on one of their own.

What's the deal...

...with the trend for students to "raise" their hands by leaning their elbow on their desk and putting their hand in the air? Sometimes, they barely raise their hands off the desk. I can't tell you how many times I ask students if they're raising their hands when they're not because I can't tell the difference anymore between a student who's raising his/her hand and a student who is playing with his/her hair or pencil or the air.

I blame me, though. If I stop responding to students who raise their hands this way, they'll learn that they need to stick that puppy straight up to be recognized.

They think if they ask, they'll receive.

My students' exam is scheduled for 3:15 this afternoon. At around 11:00 this morning, a student came to my office and asked if she could take her exam at a later date. She wasn't sick. Her grandmother hadn't died last night or this morning. Nothing. She just wanted extra time to study. Needless to say, I denied that request.

And, of course, she asked me the chapters that the exam--in 4 hours--was going to be covering. I do not see this going well for her.

A classic.

This is a question that every professor gets multiple times each semester but it never fails to piss me off and amuse me at the same time.

An e-mail from a student on Wednesday said, "I need to leave for home on Thursday morning if possible, and I would miss class that afternoon. I wanted to make sure I would not miss anything too important during class. I have arranged to get the notes I will miss from a student already. However, if I am going to miss anything major in class, I will have to stay. "

Now, this is phrased slightly more nicely than the typical, but all professors love the "Am I going to miss anything important" question. No, we do nothing important in class ever. You should be fine. Take off the rest of the semester.

Brilliant!

When discussing the number and naming of God(s) in various religions in The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins (2006. pp. 56-57) writes, "More sophisticated theologians proclaim the sexlessness of God, while some feminist theologians seek to redress hisotric injustices by designating her female. But what, after all, is the difference between a non-existent female and a non-existent male?"

Amen and hallelujah!

And he beautifully combines feminism and atheism, two of my loves.

Who's surprised? Part II.

As predicted before the semester started, one of the lazy students who had e-mailed me two months ago, came to today's exam 50 minutes late. (It's a one-hour exam.) I told him that he would have to reschedule to take the exam at another time. After doing so, he asked, "What chapters does the exam cover?"

Useful, considering he thought he was taking the exam today.

This student is going to annoy me all semester

In my general psychology class today, I was teaching about the sensory systems. At the end of the section, I talk briefly about ESP and basically crush all of their delusions telling them that there is no empirical evidence supporting extrasensory perception. The students asked a few of the typical questions like, "What about twins? Do they have any ESP?" Okay, fine. I understand those types of questions.

But then a student asked, "What about epilepsy?"

Me: "What about epilepsy?"

Student: "I don't know. Just epilepsy."

Me: "You mean is epilepsy related to ESP?"

Student: "Yes."

Me: "No."

That's easy!

I just got back to my office and I had a message from a student. The student was telling me that she wouldn't be in class later this afternoon and asked if I could send her an e-mail "with any important information that we cover in class."

Just what exactly would be the content of that e-mail?

I wish more students wrote answers like this

On an exam, I asked students to "Name one way to end synaptic transmission." Basically, neurons communicate by releasing neurotransmitters into synapses. I'm asking students for one of the ways this communication ends.

A student answered, "Disconnect the head from the body."

Yeah, that would do it. Too bad they don't get points for amusing answers.

Who's surprised?

So I met the lazy e-mailers in class today, and who's surprised that one of the two offenders walked into class 10 minutes late? Mark my words: this student is not getting higher than a C.

On the other hand, the student was wearing a Cubs shirt so maybe he's not that dumb afterall...

More pre-semester e-mail.

I just received another e-mail from a student:

"I will be in your class this fall.? If you could, I wouldlike to find out the ISBN of the book I need to purchase.? Thank you so much."

Once again, don't you love how they assume I can read their minds about which class they'll be taking... as if I only teach one class or I readily know the names of the students in each class three weeks before any of my classes have met.

What I also like about this e-mail is the request for me to do her work. GO TO THE BOOKSTORE. (And that's essentially what I told her.)

And school hasn't even started yet.

I received this e-mail from a student yesterday:

"Hi. Im in your Psychology class fo this upcoming schoolyear and I need to know the books I need to buy for your class. Can you please e-mail me back with this information?"

First, find the apostrophe on your cell phone.

Second, um, every student needs to know the books he/she needs for the upcoming semester. There's this fancy thing called a 'bookstore' on campus just for that.

Third, I teach four psychology classes next semester. "Your psychology class" is not helpful.

I do not predict a successful semester for this student. I'll try to remember at the end of the semester to post this student's grade.

Student evaluations never let me down.

I was reading through my students' written evaluations from the spring semester and came across a gem from a student in my Intro Psych class. In response to the question that asked the students to list any suggestions they had for improving the class, this student responded, "I wish she wouldn't grade the class like we were psychology majors."

First, it's a psychology class. So, it's just amusing that, on the surface, it sounds like the student is asking me not to grade a psychology class as a psychology class.

Second, and more important, I don't grade the class like they're psychology majors because I don't even know what that means. I grade the class like they're college students taking a college class.

Beyond initial amusement and the amusement from sharing the story with others, it's disturbing to a professor to read a statement like that. Not only does this sadly reflect a general trend towards entitlement and cutting corners, but this reminds me that other majors at my school are grading their students differently. When the modal grade of certain majors at your school is an 'A,' there's a problem. Let me assure you that I teach at a school where most of the students do not have the ability or put in the effort to receive As, if an 'A' means what I want it to mean. Therefore, the grade inflation in these other majors must be outrageous. No wonder my students come into my class and do not want to be graded by my "psychology" standards. The I-actually-have-to-come-to-class-and-read-the-book-and-study-for-exams-and-take-care-in-the-work-I-submit is just so unfair.

Love is...

...your husband voting 1,277 times for your favorite American Idol (David A, obviously).

The Scarlet Letter

Stuff people eat

One day in my Personality Psychology class, I was talking about culture. I was talking about different foods that people from different cultures eat. So, I solicited from them examples of foods that they found strange in other cultures or foods that they knew people from other cultures found strange here.

A student, very seriously, raised her hand and said, "Well, when I was in France, I ate veal."

Okay, maybe you're thinking she was making some "it's alarming that people would promote the horrible treatment of calves" argument? No.

And they wonder why they fail

A student came to my office and asked me if he could retake a class of mine in the fall. He said, "Would it be a problem if I signed up for your class but had another class scheduled at the same time?"

Sounds like a joke. But it's not.

There are no stupid questions, only stupid people.

Students ask great questions. And by "great," I mean that they give me a lot to make fun of to my colleagues and friends. In all fairness, most students ask decent questions. However, it's the students who ask ridiculous questions that are most annoying in class and most entertaining out of class.

Here are two gems:

"Sometimes my leg goes completely numb, why is that?" Keep in mind, I am a psychology professor and this was asked in a psychology class. I guess I could have launched into some Freudian mumbo-jumbo about how the id was likely angry at his leg and the ego, in a protective maneuver, made the leg go numb so that the id would forget about it?

Talking about treatments for depression in class one day, I was describing the herbal remedy St. John's Wort (which has been shown to have some positive effects on people with depression). A student raises her hand and says, "Is that like aspirin?"

Yes, it's exactly like aspirin. That's why it has a different name, different use, and completely different chemical make-up.

Goes without saying...

I once had a student argue a grade that I gave him on a quiz by saying, "I didn’t write the answer you were looking for because I thought it went without saying."

I didn't write "you're a moron" on the top of his quiz because I thought that went without saying too.

When did a little sexual abuse ever hurt?

Here's a excerpt from a student's paper on pornography:

"Most of the women who pose obviously enjoy it or there wouldn't be so many women doing it. I think the article said something about women in pornography being victims of child sexual abuse and quoted like 65-75 percent of the women being abused as children. So what?"

Although this was from a few years ago, something tells me that I didn't give this student a very good grade on this paper.

What does it mean to pay attention?

I know I'm going to sound way older than I actually am, but this text-messaging business is the current bane of my teaching existence. The 2007-08 academic year, for the first time, saw me add an automatic point deduction policy to my syllabus for students who are caught text-messaging in class. This will not be the first (or best) text-messaging story. I had already sent a warning e-mail to this student about seeing her texting in class. Two weeks later, I saw the long looks into her lap all throughout class. (Yeah, yeah, we've all made the jokes about other things students could be doing with their hands in their laps.) I saw the cell phone in her lap as class ended. I went back to my office and sent her the penalty e-mail. A few hours later, I received an e-mail from the student insisting that she wasn't text-messaging and that she "pay[s] attention and take[s] notes throughout class." (She also added a less-than-advised, "I wish you would have noticed that instead of my phone" to the end of the message.) I replied with a request that she come talk to me in my office. When she came to my office, I told her that I would take her at her word that she was not texting in class and that she had taken my warning e-mail seriously. However, I told her I took issue with her saying that she pays attention and takes notes throughout class given that I also saw her with her head down and eyes closed on the day in question.

She said that she was unlikely in REM sleep and that she was probably mentally taking notes.

Fetus is just a funny word

Well, I can already see that my social anxiety is going to be a hindrance to the whole posting-stuff-for-public-scrutiny aspect of blogging. It's taking me way too long to think of a title for this first post. Like anyone cares what the title of this post is. Yeah, yeah, I could say some self-effacing crap at this point like, "that's assuming anyone even reads my blogs," but I'm going to force at least a few of my friends and relatives to read it. And now that I've drawn attention to how long it's taking me to think of a title for this post, that's making me realize that it's going to be worse when the title of this post is lame. Great.

I like this font, though. So I got that goin' for me...

I've started this blog mainly to muse about things that happen at work. I'm a psychology professor at a small liberal arts school. It seems like there isn't a day that goes by that a student doesn't do something to amuse and/or annoy me to the point that I want to share the story with others. As is true with most blogs, these stories may only resonate with me but I'm going to put them out there anyway. So, without further ado...

I was grading exams last night from my Intro Psych class. One of the short-answer questions was "What is womb envy?" If you're not familiar with the term, it was pretty much Karen Horney's response to Freud's idea of penis envy. She was annoyed, and rightfully so, with his suggestion that women were inferior to men because they didn't have penises so she suggested it was really men who were envious of women. She suggested that man's historical shit treatment of woman comes from his envy of her ability to have children. Okay, so now that you know the right answer to the question... a student responded: "Womb envy is when the fetus becomes kind of attached to being in the mother's womb and does not want to come out." I want to believe he was trying to be funny because he didn't know the answer, but scarily enough that could have been a sincere attempt at a right answer.

Btw, "Horney" is pronounced "Horn-eye." Imagine all the chuckles when I put her name up on the power point slide before pronouncing it aloud.