The Pissed Off Professor

I posted my e-mail response to one of my students yesterday, and today, I learned from another of my students what the real scoop was with Ms. Numerous Deaths and Tragedies Girl. She is up for a promotion at a local (low-end) electronics store.

If things go well for her, she’ll soon be an assistant manager. (And to think we just got finished reading John Updike’s “A & P.”) In order for her to have a shot at this coveted position, she’s had to work some odd shifts and overtime to prove herself.

This has resulted in her missing class and deadlines and lying to me about it. She was earning an “A,” but she’s tanked her grade into the “F” category.

I am certainly in no position to judge the choices my students make; however, I can’t help but feel as if a really talented student has blown a shot at something good in exchange for an opportunity that is not going to be long-term.

Shortly after learning the truth about this student, I returned to my office where my officemate was conferencing with one of her students.

This student is an extremely gifted writer: she has recently turned twenty-two, and is apparently as good a student in the rest of her classes as she is in English. She loves writing—she’s even had a few things published, but she wants to be a doctor.

It turns out she is also a musician—a drummer in fact, and she must be pretty good because she decided to audition for Beyonce’s upcoming tour. She was extended a job offer to be the drummer for Beyonce’s all-girl touring band.

She confessed to my officemate that while excited, she was going to turn the offer down so as not to get behind in school

I was shocked (and frustrated and saddened) to learn my officemate hadn’t tried to convince her to go be a drummer for two years.

Again, this is a twenty-two year old who has an opportunity to travel the world with a reputable performer while exploring what must be considerable musical talent.

I am relatively certain school and the rest of her life will be here waiting for her were she to choose to go be a drummer; however, I fear what the repercussions might be if she stays here, continues with school, and looks back at some point wondering “what if?”

So, in one afternoon, I dealt with a student who tossed a good grade away to pursue an assistant manager’s position at an electronics store and another student who isn’t going to see the world as a drummer so as not to “get behind.”

Honestly, these two choices have left me (theoretically) speechless.

Today, I go to my classes to perform tasks completely devoid of anything close to teaching: I am returning recent work and collecting more.

Days like this make it hard to go to “the office,” but as the end draws near, it is merely a part of the process.

I have the last of the formal essays to return to my students, and it was a mixed bag: of course, it generally is, but the really good papers were dangerously close to being overshadowed by the ill-conceived works that scream shrilly at a teacher when she is at the end of the term. (That screaming is present but not nearly as annoying when these mistakes are made at the beginning of the term.)

I am most concerned by some of these last essays because today is the day the students’ research papers are due. (For the record, these are research projects they were assigned fifteen [15] weeks ago, and my students have completed two pre-paper assignments designed to keep them working gradually on the paper.)

These research papers were originally due Monday, but I bumped the due date to today as I won’t start my grading until tomorrow anyway. I even cancelled Monday’s class to give them a chance to work on their papers and/or ask me questions.

Between Friday of last week and yesterday afternoon, I received three e-mailed questions about the research papers. Not surprisingly, these questions dealt with odd citation issues or the best way to integrate a source, or whether the ten-page limit was firm, and they came from “A” students.

When I got up this morning, I had almost thirty new e-mailed questions piled up in my class-related IN box. (Several were duplicates containing small tirades from students who had e-mailed me a question at 11:30 pm and who were miffed that by 1:00 am I had not responded.)

The volume of last-minute questions scared me, and reading some of them—well, obviously there are going to be a few more failing students than I had hoped this semester.

More troublesome than the stupid questions—and yes, sometimes there are stupid questions—are the family deaths / emergencies.

I have become just jaded enough to have answered one of my students as follows:

I am very sorry to hear about your loss. I believe that makes two relatives and one family pet who have died this semester—that is a serious string of bad luck. It’s good you won’t be able to get to class today to turn-in your paper: I’d be worried you’d get hit by a bus.

Under the circumstances and given everything you’re dealing with right now, I’m certain the failing grade I have to assign to you isn’t relevant.

I wish you the best, and again, I am sorry for yet another loss in your life.

I presume from the context, you get that this student is suffering from a major case of liar-liar-pants-on-fire.

The reason I dread going in today—short of the fact that I have no teaching to look forward to—is the students who will come to my office bearing excuses. Some will be teary-eyed; others will be flippant; but none will simply admit they put their papers off to the very end, and just as I had warned would be the case, they find themselves facing a due date they weren’t responsible enough to meet.

Thank goodness the end is near.

For the last few days, I have been pretending I am not really a teacher: it’s too much to swallow with shootings and discussions regarding flexible handcuffs, and students urinating in the back of classrooms.

My semester has also come to the point at which the teaching is over: all that remains is collecting a research paper, proctoring a final exam, and assessing how things went this time around.

No matter how many students I see make improvements, I always lose several I shouldn’t, and these failures will haunt me for a period of time equal to the break I have until I begin a new session.

I have been spending a good deal of time at red Ravine, a blog I discovered by accident: one of the writers there visited one of my other sites, The Grammar Police, and I always like to see who is who when comments are left.

The first time I visited, I must have spent two hours reading stuff and looking at stuff and feeling like I had stumbled upon kindred spirits. Several days (and visits) later, I knew I had found people who were in many ways like myself.

Most of what I connect with, I connect with as a writer, but today, today there was a post that made the teacher in me happy. It reminded me that there is a reason I do what I do and put up with all of the crap that no teacher should ever have to deal with.

Oddly, the pile of reading journals and papers surrounding me seem less ominous, and I again feel ready to be a teacher.