The Pissed Off Professor

I used to try to hold regular class meetings on the days formal writing assignments were due, but I’ve learned how foolish it is to expect the average (i.e. procrastinating) student to finish up a paper and read something for a class discussion.

I’ve come up with a few ways to solve this issue:

• The quick meeting: I collect papers, go over any pressing details, and dismiss the class.
• The in-class workshop: I assign an in-class reading and a discussion follows.
• The trip to the library: I escort my students to the mysterious brick building that takes up one end of the campus and show them what’s inside.

The first solution serves a dual role: I don’t have to put on a show for an entire period, and late students miss turning in their work—this leads to stiff penalties. The second solution is a bit dicey: the brain drain of paper-completion usually means even in-class work goes poorly. The third solution works reasonably well, but most students notice if I take them to the library more than once per semester, and this is confusing for them.

Monday, was a paper due date, and I went for option #3, so it was a hi-ho hi-ho it’s, off to the library we go day.

Monday’s task was to introduce the class to the wonders of online databases. The utter joy of being able to access full-text articles from a computer—even while seated in one’s home—is lost on most of my students because they have lived their entire lives in a world in which the internet was always at their fingertips. Most have never looked up a book using a card catalog. (Actually, most have never checked out a library book. Ever.)

I get downright giddy over online databases, but I’m a bit of a geek.

They didn’t get very giddy, and I just don’t get it: they have research papers to write, and being able to complete some of their research online is such a big gift, they ought to be celebrating.

Perhaps they were so overwhelmed by seeing thousands of books in one location they simply couldn’t take in the databases.