So when will the conversion of Unfogged into AWB's mirror site be complete?
Does AWB have a post slamming DaveB? This is totally the time to bring that one out, Ogged.
That exact thing sort of happened to me, except that I was the student. There was a final paper due during the week before finals week; I emailed it to him as he had said to do. It was in my "outbox", with his address on it, I have no idea why he wouldn't have gotten it. My report card came back with an "Incomplete" for the class. Not a D, an incomplete. I emailed him after getting the report card (this was now about three weeks after the end of the semester), and asked him what was going on, and he basically responded by saying "I didn't get your final paper. I was thinking maybe you could send it to me sometime, and then I'll give you a grade for the class."
I had no idea what to do, and was kind of surprised that he hadn't contacted me to tell me that he didn't get the paper, since after all it was due over two weeks before he was supposed to have his grades in. After all, since they were supposed to be sent through email, it's possible that the email went to a spam folder or something, which is probably what happened.
I just fowarded him my earlier email to him, containing the paper, and a note that said "Please note that this was originally sent December 5th, as the original email header should prove, and the file hasn't been changed since then either. If you want further proof that it was written before the deadline, you can look at the copy on my Zip drive." He then graded the paper, gave me a B+, and then I had a grade for the class to replace the incomplete.
He seemed to see it as a completely normal situation. I was wondering how many other students had their papers lost by him and then did the same thing.
Now that I think about it, he was probably in the middle of intense job negotiations around that time, being an apparent rising star of sorts in his philosophical field.
Hang on, Ned. There's a five month gap and an aggravating sense of entitlement in AWB's note.
I never had the guts to ask for favors like this from professors. If I missed a few classes or blew the deadline on a paper, I felt honor-bound to stop going to class altogether.
Of course, since it's taking me the better part of a decade to finish undergrad, this might not be the best strategy.
Also, the student in AWB's class didn't write the paper. I didn't realize you could get a C in a class where you didn't do half the work.
5: Hey, I do that too!
Hey, I started college more than a decade ago!
Yeah, not a great strategy.
I think my prof would have had no problem with changing someone's grade 5 months later, because he didn't really want us to learn anything in particular except to be exposed to certain ideas. He was pretty half-hearted about assigning anything at all as opposed to just having a big discussion group.
But he wouldn't have done it for this person who didn't write anything at all. He would at least require them to come in and demonstrate that they had read one of Churchland's papers about color.
7: "Thomas H. Benton is the pen name of William Pannapacker"
This seems backwards.
7, he lost me at: Others come to class dressed in a slovenly or indiscreet manner. They wear hats to conceal that they have not washed that day.
7: Bah. I let students eat in class and I don't care if they put their feet up and get comfy or wear hats over their dirty hair. Benton's painting with a broad, broad brush.
3: Unusual is only the fact that he didn't contact you. In my dept here (grad school) most profs are pretty laid back about grades. So if there is a class project and you don't do it you often get an incomplete (sometimes you have to ask) until you do (the university has a one year limitation though).
undergrad may be a different story though.
It can be sort of dispiriting to wake up early, shower, and dress nicely for a class in which all the students wear sweatpants and have clearly just rolled out of bed.
When did Benton come out? I used to read his columns from time to time; they were interesting, if somewhat curmudgeonly.
I have a bad history with regards to turning in work after the last possible minute. If I wasn't at this moment busy trying to turn in some work at the last possible minute so that I can graduate from law school I'd tell more of the story. Sorry professors everywhere, and thanks for being so understanding.
10-12: Indeed, though I can see his point. My current location is basically the only university/college I've ever heard of where the undergrads need to be instructed to bathe. Not infrequently.
Surely this:
Thomas H. Benton is the pen name of William Pannapacker,
is the sign of someone unclear on the concept?
I had a student come by last week and we had the following exchange:
Student: Hi Professor Lear, I just wanted to ask some questions about the final.
Me: Sure.
Student: So I was wondering whether I should study this reading.
Me: Well, probably not, because the final was last Tuesday.
My recent conversation with a student.
ogged, I think the problem is that students and parents see themselves as consumers of grades, and the educators as providers of same, rather than education. For AWB to deny this student an unearned grade will, in fact, educate that student.
21: Oh man, I've been there. Actually got caffeine poisoning during the writing of one paper, a 15-pager that I didn't pick a topic for until 2 a.m. the day it was due. Still got an A, though.
I'm with 5 and 8, and despite having graduated many years ago, I'll confess to still having nightmares where I'm back at college and realize to my horror 3/4 of the way through the semester that I've completely forgotten the existence of half the classes in which I'm enrolled.
It's not the consumer thing. It's that undergraduates see young professors as peers, rather than authority figures. You just have to be a hardass for a few years, and word will get around.
23: For just about every paper I wrote in grad school, I sat down with a six-pack (Genny Lite or Golden Anniversary) at the computer, and just started drinking and typing.
Surprisingly, this usually worked.
I didn't know it was even possible to get caffeine poisoning.
21: I said this at your place, but I'll say it here too:
Her mother gives her her brother's prescription medication during finals to help her study???
Wow.
Apropos of much of this thread, I really need to finish the last chapter of my thesis, which I am presenting on Friday.
It's easier when you have caffeine pills. This was after I ran out of adderall.
I'm trying to finish a paper right now that's probably the last paper I'll ever write and is due in 30 minutes.
And here I am.
18 is so great. I've had moments like that; playing them right requires keeping the look of kindly benevolence while delivering the knockout blow.
Benton's cranky, no doubt about that. Some of what he gets irritated about is irritating, some of it is just silly.
31: Finish your paper!
29: Finish your thesis!
24: Interesting to hear that others have this recurrent dream/nightmare. Some class I entirely blew off for the entirety of the semester, to the extent that I can't remember when it's held, or where, in fact have lost my schedule altogether; and graduation is coming up, and when I do remember the class at all, I'm feverishly hoping the Professor will have forgotten all about me, that it will all somehow disappear.
Horrible fear and shame in those dreams, which I seem to have every few months for years now.
Okay, yeah, I'm going, but I'm only finishing and not taking an extra day so I can go out and get wasted on this, the final day of my academic career and also my 25th birthday.
I seldom had those dreams during college, but I had them all the time when I was a prof. Only the classes I'd forgotten all about were the ones I was supposed to be teaching.
35: Happy birthday and congrats on being done!! Go finish the fucking paper!!
Happy Birthday! And congratulations.
7: He stands at the entrance to his classroom and says "hello" to his students and wonders why they look at him like he's a stalker?
Writing briefs feels an awful lot like writing papers sometimes.
Writing briefs feels an awful lot like writing papers sometimes
Memos, reports, summaries...
Not to mention his invocation of the broken window theory. So students looking at facebook during class is the beginning of the class's slide into Hobbesian chaos?
45 to 43. Also, happy birthday, leblanc.
The greeting-at-the-door bit renders the rest of his column pointless. What a freak. That would have been creepy at any point in history. He's probably known as the creepy prof because of it.
I still have those dreams, and it's been 20 fucking years since the ignominious end of my horrible college experience. And yet sometimes I think hmmm, I should really go back to school.
Happy Birthday, ml.
45: Ah, yes. The minor rudeness of all against all. What are our colleges coming to?
my suggestion:
Dear MRS. OAT
Your missive provided much mirth and laughter. I would love to read more of the same, if you have such.
yours,
AWB
XOXOXO
Writing briefs feels an awful lot like writing papers sometimes
and columns, reviews, program notes...
Writing for a living is like this awful karmic payback that just keeps on going.
It can be sort of dispiriting to wake up early, shower, and dress nicely for a class in which all the students wear sweatpants and have clearly just rolled out of bed.
never mind, a trip to the opera in the evening will cheer you up, probably.
I'm going to the opera tonight, actually! It's sometimes hard for me to change into nice clothes for it, knowing that B would prefer me to.
Hee, Michael.
Neil, I don't get where you think I said the second paper was worth 50% of the grade. There were three papers, a final, and a participation grade, and, missing one of the small papers, the best she could hope for was an 85%, but since her other grades weren't great, she earned a C. I didn't give it to her for free.
On one hand, Benton looks like a serial killer; on the other hand his students are pretty enthused. Verdict: benign toolbox.
And many happy returns to m. leblanc! Spankings all around!
Happy birthday, m. We expect stories.
Indeed. Yay, M.! Happy quarter-century.
Thinking of students..... we're now roughly 18 hours from the start of a final exam. What is it with student who leave it until now to realize they are in deep trouble in the course? Especially when you tell them exactly that after the midterm (i.e. `you will not pass this course unless you start working harder now').
bah.
Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice (staged by Mark Morris!). You can stream it live online from here.
Had a student of my wife's play from that at our wedding, on the flute.
66: I think they want to believe that what I argue is a contract relationship (I will do my best to teach, you will do your best to learn; you do your best to express learning, I will do my best to recognize every shred of said learning, etc.) is really a parental unconditional-love relationship. (I am a very bad boy, but mommy still loves me right?) I am not a nurturing or arbitrary-excuse-making person, and I hold everyone to as close to the same standards I can. They don't want things to be fair. At the bottom of it, they want special treatment and a free pass for not doing work, not because they're lazy, but because they want to know you love them without their having deserved it.
I'm pretty excited about it. I won't dance in the aisles, but I may squirm a little in my seat.
35: Happy Birthday, M.!
Sophomore year, I took my biology exam stoned to the gills, as I had written the wrong date on my calendar and was celebrating the completion of the single worst French lit class I have ever taken in my life. Fortunately, this merely freed my brain to wax eloquently on the subject of organelles. Or mitochondria. Or what I had for lunch, which, at that university, was more of an experiment in scombroid fish poisoning, and so qualified for biological examination.
But it would never have occurred to me to ask the prof for another go at a grade. Sheesh. My WASP ancestors would have been appalled and the Viking ones would have made me eat lutefisk.
Not to threadjack again, but this is the Paris Hilton mentality: Take no personal responsibility, assume that others "owe" you merely because you exist. Too much Mama and Daddy running interference for their spoilt children, until the child take it as its due, some entitlement by birthright to have life just exactly as it wants. And all those Barbie accessories, too.
Yeah, I handed back papers today that were about half C's and low B's, one D, and said, along with it, "Don't complain about C's. C's fed this mouth and get me into grad school, so no bitching."
21, 28: Where I am, Adderall is pretty close to ubiquitous as a finals-aid. Everybody seems to be able to get it someplace.
Re: dreams, I periodically dream that my high school's discovered that I failed to take Algebra II or somesuch, so that I never actually graduated, and I have to go back each day for that one class.
Anyone got that one?
(The sensation of squeezing into the little desk is particularly acute -- in fact, they can't have been that small in high school.)
"To follow her train of thought one required abstract thinking with power analagous to pinning a beam of light with a needle."
I don't know why it was such a disillusionment to find out that dysfunctional procrastination habits and lies about deadlines persisted in the post-college work world, but it sure was. Forget DE's smiting ancestors, my parents would have smote me for pulling a stunt like AWB's student's.
60, you didn't, but the student seemed to be speaking in terms of "the first paper", "the second paper" and "the exam" and it seemed natural to me that this described the full extent of the coursework.
I actually didn't quite satisfy the graduation requirements at the U of C. Their core required a bio lab and a physics lab, and while I'd transferred in with a whole bunch of physics credit, none of my MIT classes were labs. I spent a certain amount of time talking to my advisor about whether there was any way to get the requirement waived (or something worked out so I didn't have to take a whole fucking year of Physics 101 again, like just showing up for the labs rather than the whole class), and nothing ever got resolved.
But they let me graduate, so what the hell. I still don't know if someone made an active decision to let it go, or if they just didn't notice.
I have not only the dream where I realize during finals week that I've completely forgotten about one class, but also one where I have to go back and finish my undergraduate degree at the prestige school I transferred away from. It's always a bit awkward explaining why I'm so much older than everyone else and already have a degree or two.
Angry student to vice-chancellor and a roomful of other administrative types: "You work for us!!!!" Umm, no. And the barely-veiled threats to Burn Shit Down? Not helping.
It took forever for me to get the results when I had to retake (ugh!) part of the Architecture Registration Exams (9 parts!). I couldn't sleep, I was miserable, and I had the only school-anxiety dream I can ever recall - I was back retaking freshman Studio, and I recall commenting to one of my classmates (they were of course my actual classmates from 17 years ago) that I didn't feel like I was learning anything.
Good lord. Yeah, so, um, I enrolled for the class, can I have a B?
At least as a grad student TA there's someone to whom I can pass the buck when annoying things like that happen.
66: In my illustrious "King of the Incompletes" undergraduate career, I always left my requests for incompletes until finals week. Not so much because I didn't recognize I had a problem earlier, but because it took that long for me to overcome the "I can handle this myself, thanks" pride and finally acknowledge that I wasn't going to be able to pull off the multiple spectacular all-nighters that were going to rescue the situation. I had a lot of resistance to asking for any kind of help from anyone until it became absolutely positively obvious that I needed it.
It is only in the last couple of years that I have (hopefully) stopped having a dream exactly like the one discribed in 34.
Actually, my re-occuring dream was that I had one class that I stopped atending for which I realize that the final paper is due in two weeks. Sometimes I have started planning how I can re-structure my schedule to create time to work on it.
It is disturbing I have woken up thinking that I need to figure out how to take a week of vacation, and then realized it was a dream.
Dude, you don't wear the jacket and tie for them, you wear it for you. That, that is "unclear on the concept."
Happy Birthday M.!
I frequently have those I-forgot-the-class dreams. I also have dreams where I have to go back to high school or college and take some remedial class because a hole in my diploma was found, and it's very embarrassing.
I simply cannot imagine asking a professor for any kind of favor along those lines. It's mind-boggling. I don't think I ever even bothered turning in anything late. I never missed an exam, but there was the time that I was up for 30-odd hours straight doing this and that research-oriented activity when it dawned on me that woops! I have a midterm in electrodynamics and radiation today. I couldn't even sit next to my friends, and so they could not kick me awake when I passed out in the middle of the exam; finally the professor politely tapped me on the shoulder.
having students and parents thinking of themselves as "consumers" of education, which is a "service" provided by the university and its employers, seems like a bad move.
They are consumers and it is a service; the problem is they've misread the product label and think they're getting something other than what they've actually paid for.
Job gods permitting, when I become a prof, I plan to be as intimidating as the administration and the weight of teaching evals on tenure allow. When students, male and female, burst into tears the minute they come into my office, I'll know I've got the menacing titrated just right.
Okay, so my story wasn't very exceptional. I was frankly just trying to get people to guess who the prof was.
I was frankly just trying to get people to guess who the prof was.
I think we were all just assuming it was Labs.
I'veactually had the "impossible to rearrange the schedule to get all these things done, oh why are the deadlines so close together, I must run around and ask for the deadlines to be changed, but suddenly there's even less time now!" dreams more than the ones in which I had forgotten to take a class and am suddenly horrified to remember it. But both have happened frquently, along with all other kinds of dreams, since I've been taking melatonin now and then.
93: I have a lot of those dreams, probably one every two weeks. When I wake up from them in the middle of the night, I'm usually so disoriented that I can't convince myself that they're not real. On occasion, I've believed in the dreams all the way through the night and only been able to think them through in the morning.
I assume it's because I'd like to go back to school but am not going.
I only have the "I forgot about the class" dreams when I am sleeping in instead of going to class.
If you were at Rut/gers, Ned, I know who you're talking about.
7, 11: Dr. Manners lost me a couple of paragraphs in. I think the students were entering the classroom eyes down so they wouldn't accidentally trip on the giant pole up his ass.
He's already risen to the top.
Kobe!
by the way, AWB, if someone's thick enough to write that letter, they're probably thick enough to believe that your university still has corporal punishment, if you're into that sort of thing. blah blah professionalism blah.
89: Don't forget the value of silence for intimidation. A dead-pan stare and silence as a student panics and digs his own grave is very high on the effect for effort scale.
If you were at Rut/gers, Ned, I know who you're talking about.
Intense job negotiations in that dept are not that a distinguishing feature.
ooh, that's a good tip. will file for future use.
mm, it's been a long day already, already on the way to Becks-style.
I frequently have those I-forgot-the-class dreams. I also have dreams where I have to go back to high school or college and take some remedial class because a hole in my diploma was found
I realize Cerebrocrat asked to stop talking about this, but I wonder, in part because I never realized so many other people have these dreams: um, I have always thought these dreams I have suggested that I feel I don't deserve my degree(s).
God knows that's a ongoing theme for most academics, and perhaps others, so I'm being boring.
I realize Cerebrocrat asked to stop talking about this
As if I expected my pleas to move all your cold black hearts.
I was always most conscientious about getting things in on time for the professors who were most generous with extensions. These were usually very Senior people, and I just didn't want to let them down.
Oh yeah? Can't wait to get you in my class.
Also. I did have a student ask me to change his grade, a year, perhaps, after the fact.
The scenario mentioned here before: he was now entering law school, and damn, that C I'd given him because he'd failed to produce one of the three required papers, though he'd participated in class with energy, was cramping his style.
He felt horrible, he said, apologized profusely, wanted to send me the missing paper, could I could I please accept it, and assuming it was satisfactory, change his grade to a B?
Well, fuck. He was a reasonable law school candidate. Was I being taken advantage of? Maybe, but to be honest, his foray to me was humorous.
I agreed to accept the damn paper, which he surely had to do some work to produce. When I got it, I actually didn't read it. Boring. I changed his grade.
The only thing that really bothers me about this is that I felt badly for not reading the paper. But I mean, really. I read papers in order to provide comments.
I sat on that stupid paper for a couple of months out of some sort of misapplied guilt, then finally threw it away.
a "service" provided by the university
So this isn't the "service learning" all the cool professors are talking about?
109: My point was also that people who were jerks about being authority figures usually lost my respect. Humility is something that I value a lot. The Juniro people often seemed desperate to prove that they were competent and in charge. The Senior faculty seemed much more comfortable admitting their mistakes and the limits of their knowledge.
Being a hardass didn't work, but I admit that I'm a bit of a freak.
Also, how do you all feel about about clemency for something like depression? I got very depressed my sophomore year in college. I was really having a hard time functioning. I went to the health service for treatment, but itr took me about 6 weeks to convince them that a medical evaluation. I failed one of my chemistry hourlies. It never occurred to me to ask to make it up in any way, but I sometimes wondered whether I shoudl have. I just cowered in embarassment and never asked for any help from the TF or the professor. I got a B in the end. I had done all of the lab reports, and I must have done well enough on the final, but still I wonder.
Also, how do you all feel about about clemency for something like depression?
AWB, at least, seems to be all for it.
113: Right. But there's always the danger that professors won't take you seriously if you admit to a psychiatric history. Kay Jamison talked about that recently. She said she loved Hopkins, in part, because the program director of the psych residency wouldn't let a depressed resident quit. He said, "we'll get you better first, and then you can quit if you want to."
Other medical schools have been known to push people to withdraw.
I also think that it's reasonable to ask for help when you're talking about a severe, single episode. Chronic low-grade stuff needs to be treated, but it shouldn't be used as an excuse. Figuring out the difference is hard.
how do you guys deal w/ cheating? Not paper plagiarism; plain old copying other students' answers. My husband is having real problems--esp. cases where he very very strongly suspects but isn't 100% sure. I suggested that he at least call the student in and ask for an explanation and make them squirm as an intermediate approach.
The damn classrooms are apparently perfect for it: stadium seating, desks close together, & every desk occupied during the exam. He made up two tests, but there's generally multiple seats a student can copy off of so that doesn't quite solve it.
112: As much fun as I was having being a jackass, I probably could manage a serious reply here. Of course you're right that being a hardass for its own sake mostly communicates ineffectiveness, ego threat, detachment, or whatever else (nothing good). I joke about wanting to be a tyrant, however, because I think that among the relatively few things of real value that a professor adds to a course is the structure he gives to the curriculum, and the standards set and level of pressure to meet them imposed. Fear is nature's most potent motivator, and I figure simply raising the stakes a hair might give my students something more of value to take away with them in the end.
(I swear I am not a sadist.)
To tell the truth, there's also something to the complaint voiced in the premise of AWB and Ogged's posts: "Why doesn't anybody do something about these fucking kids?" A very mild-mannered, sunny-dispositioned colleague of mine once observed that the difference between "back in my day" and "kids these days" seemed to be that "When we were young, we were afraid of our parents. Now nobody's afraid of their parents; I think it worked better the other way."
As for make-ups and mental health exceptions, I think the thing to do is to allow them but still attach a cost for not conforming to the original requirements. For instance, in Parsimon's case, I might have accepted the missing paper, but then required some additional work, even if it were only a token thing so as to remind them: you did not fulfull the agreed-upon requirements; now you owe me more. I'd include the case of depressed or otherwise unfortunately compromised students in this - sure you can make the work up, but now you owe me a little more. I don't think it does a depressed student much service to pretend away the effects his problem has on his overall life - just as with an addict, it's therapeutic for the patient to understand that failure to treat the problem has undesirable consequences. On the other hand, you want to be compassionate and not wreck somebody's best prospects to prove a point.
Btw, I really liked the Hopkins story.
re: 117
Yeah, I think I agree with more or less all of that. Also, with the caveat that however you draw the line between being too tough and too compliant, some student will feel you've drawn it in the wrong place.
What are the symptoms of caffeine poisoning?
re: 119
Shaking, tremors, confusion, nausea, vomiting, panic attacks, confusion and seizures. Some people seem to get psychotic symptoms [or so a quick internet search tells me].
The usual 'too much coffee' stuff.
120: Plus cardiac arrhythmias, and all the low potassium symptoms if you push the electrolyte balance too far. IMX it's not that difficult if you have a serious coffee jones.
Personally, I feel pretty odd if I have too much coffee -- and 'too much' is only, say, more than three or four within the space of a few hours.
At Cala U, grades are finalized, except in the case of clerical errors and pre-approved extension, shortly after the end of the semester. Preventing students from deciding that they really need a B a year after the fact, and preventing professors from screwing a student two years down the road by lowering their grade.
So parsimon's law wannabe would have been SOL, which is just fine by me. I would not have accepted the missing paper. It's unfair to the other students, to my mind, some of whom probably actually earned their Bs (by turning in the assignments I mean, not by wanting to apply to law school.)
Bostoniangirl, I figure the standard for mental illness should be like the standard for any other illness. If you can get a doctor's note or health excuse, that's all the professor should need to know, and the student and professor and the dean can make arrangements for getting the work in. The student really needs to get help, and the student also shouldn't be responsible for trying to convince the professor she's really ill.
116: Coming back to this thread late.... in that situation, if the material allows for it, I'd be tempted to make several versions of the exam that look very similar, but aren't the same. Different constants, ask is `such and such larger' vs. `such and such smaller', etc. but otherwise have them identical.
Correctly worked out answers to the wrong version of the question are probably cheats. I realize this is going to depend a lot on what he teaches.
Happy yesterday, M. leB!
I never* graduated high school and I sometimes suffer from irrational anxiety about being asked to demonstrate that I did.
Happy Birthday and congratulations, leblanc.
What is the Dean's position on changing grades?
Can you simply change someone's permanent record whenever you wish?
If so, are there any UVa professors on Unfogged who would consider changing some grades from the 80's? If not, could you just give me an A in statistics and forward it to UVa?
Also, I would like to learn Spanish, but have never actually taken a class. Is that an impediment to one of you professor types giving me an A in Spanish?
WRT to ogged's original post -
Thinking $40k in tuition and fees entitles you to a free pass academically and good grades from your professors: dickhead
Thinking $40k in tuition and fees entitles you to at least a little pull in how the administration handles student-life concerns like a student center, better food, etc.: eminently reasonable
I still took no end of flak from my "betters" at school for holding this view, though. They were so aghast at the idea that any part of the student-university relationship could resemble the consumer-producer relationship that they refused to see the university for what it is: something that does much more than just provide students with a cradle of learning.
This idea of changing grades after the fact seems crazy. Getting an incomplete and finishing it later is one thing, and I certainly used it a few times, but once the class is done, it's done, right?
(One of the low points of my college career, though, was taking an F in a class I had stopped doing the work in, instead of dropping it and having it disappear from my record. I had convinced myself that I deserved the F and making sure it was on my record was the only honest thing to do.)
Also, I would like to learn Spanish, but have never actually taken a class
Me too! Is there some way I can retroactively have learned several foreign languages in all the time I have wasted before today?
(Also I feel kind of .... guilty about never having gotten a grade lower than B in my undergraduate years despite having put almost no work into most of the classes. It kind of sucks and I wish I could go back and have put more work into learning. What stays with me from college is my sucky study habits and high bullshit capacity.
Cae, without that bullshit capacity you wouldn't be the success you are today, nor would you be beloved by all. Don't be so hard on yourself.
Also I feel kind of .... guilty about never having gotten a grade lower than B in my undergraduate years despite having put almost no work into most of the classes. It kind of sucks and I wish I could go back and have put more work into learning
Oh btw I am teh smart. You should read Bourdieu on the effortlessly successful student.
Oh btw I am teh smart.
Sorry if my 130 comes off as bragging -- I am not intending it to.
Gonerill, do you mean this book?
As someone who never even seriously looked into grad school, I have to ask, does all this stuff even matter? I mean, like everyone else this stories are varying degrees of outlandish to me simply for the idea of changing a grade, but they sound outlandish to me also because what's wrong with a C?
what's wrong with a C?
A lot, if you're trying to get into a top-tier grad or professional school.
Not that much, if it's just one course. Law schools are pretty competitive, though, which is why generally if you want to go to law school you should actually turn in the assignments....
134: No -- though it's a great book -- I was thinking of his earlier stuff on reproduction in education, eg "Cultural reproduction and social reproduction" in R. Brown (ed.), Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change. Etc. The idea is that cultural differences originating in class position are systematically misrecognized as differences in individual giftedness in the classroom, and what distinguishes the good students is the seemingly natural, effortless way they succeed, as opposed to the drudges who, even if they do well, do so though slogging. France and Britain both have a long-standing devotion to the effortlessly brilliant boy. America is a little different, because hard work isn't quite so despised culturally.
Tangentially ... years ago a prof who was submitting his chapter several months late (editor here) claimed his dog had eaten the original zip disk and he'd had to rewrite from scratch. Best excuse ever.
Cala--The convincing part related to the health services. The social workers were pretty well convinced that I was kidn of okay, because I was desperately trying to get help and holding it together so that I could do that. It took me a long time to get an appointment to see a psychiatrist--about 6 weeks from when I first showed up, more than 3 months from the osnet of symptoms.
It never occurred to me to ask for a doctor's note. That's all I'm saying.
(One of the low points of my college career, though, was taking an F in a class I had stopped doing the work in, instead of dropping it and having it disappear from my record. I had convinced myself that I deserved the F and making sure it was on my record was the only honest thing to do.)
See, this is interesting, because I did the same thing, roughly speaking -- and while professors talk about how unfair it is to the students who earned their A's to give an A to a student who didn't do the work and begged for it, it also seems unfair to the students who got D's and didn't beg for a change -- because it would never have occurred to them to do so, because they thought there was some honesty in getting the grade they deserved, or for whatever reason. It depreciates the low value of bad grades even further, and creates an expectation that, if you get a bad grade, you should pull strings to get it changed, because that is "what is done" -- and that if you didn't, this somehow makes it even worse.
But I don't know. Mr. Williams has an MIT address, and I'm about to start a doctoral program at a top university this fall, so it might also be interesting to track outcomes and see how future success is correlated to requesting grade changes, however that would be done. If nothing else, it might be instructive for the students asking.