Wednesday, April 27, 2011

End-of-Semester Rant


As it comes to the end of the school year, there’s no relief from excuses from students who suddenly are shocked to learn that, GASP, it’s almost the end of the school year.

Exhibit A
Me: “Have you started working on your multimedia project yet?”
Student: “No. I think we’re going to wait until the last week.”
Me: “Um…yeah, that’s now. It’s due next week.”
Student: “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! You can’t drop that bombshell on me!”
Me: “It’s been in the syllabus since the beginning of the semester.”

Exhibit B
Student: “I want to change the topic of my paper.”
Me: “Okay. Why?”
Student: “Well, since you surprised us with this assignment…”
Me: “It wasn’t a surprise. You knew about it the first day of class.”

Exhibit C
Student: “What are we doing in class today?”
Me: “Um…haven’t you checked the syllabus?”
Student: “No. I don’t even have a binder for this class.”
Me: “That might be a problem.”

Not to say that I’m not full of excuses myself with my class work. I have a horrible case of senioritis, which will only double, I’m sure, this summer with my remaining two classes (don’t get excited; I still have my dissertation to complete, but, yes, the end is ALMOST in sight, lol).

Exhibit A (e-mail)
Me: “Here’s my final paper. Please let me know when you receive it.”
Professor: “I have it am looking forward to reading it. Did you understand the corrections I made to your draft?”
Me: “Yes, I did. Thank you!”
Little does she know that I totally ignored those corrections…whoops…

Exhibit B
Friend, also in school: “I really don’t want to do any more work now.”
Me: “Me, either. I realized that if I don’t do my final project for my IT class, I still have a B in the class. That’s hard to pass up.”

Good news for me (unless I don’t finish all my coursework in time!) is that my semester ends May 3, thank God. I’m sick of this. Bad news for my students is that theirs goes on for another three weeks.  

3 comments:

Brooke said...

Dave Ramsey always says "don't forget Christmas is in December this year" maybe you should remind your students of that too ;)

Mari said...

I'm sure it's funny to be on both sides of the teacher/ student thing. I do think your exhibits are a bit more sensible than your students though!

misti said...

Oh my word. One of my major professors made a ton of RED INK marks (GAG) on one of my final drafts. She said not to give it back to her until I'd made her changes. Well...her changes were idiotic. I turned it in without her changes, and she sent me an email about how much better it was. Aaaaahaha!