I Swear I Did Not Write This
But variations on this conversation have happened to me a few times this year …both from younger and older students.
From Rate Your Students
Posted by Melissa on March 26th, 2007 under Histoire d'ArtOn Adult Students, Or, Another Reason Not To Have Study Guides
Up until recently, I was on the same page as the “Woe is us, these children hath no sense” brigade. I started many sentences with “When I was an undergrad . . . ”
Then I started noticing a few things, namely: it’s not always the “kids.” In fact, I don’t think it’s a generation we have to be worried about. It is society. This complete and total self-absorption and refusal to take responsibility for one’s actions is now a cultural thing. You only have to be on public transportation and overhear someone else’s VERY personal cell phone conversation to know that the comfort and sanity of others is not at all important to the average American. But outside of public transportation, I think the same applies: “It’s all about me.”
My colleague, let’s call her Dr. Madge, teaches a class that meets only once a week. The week before the midterm, Student Sally missed the class. Student Sally is in her early 40s and has two sons in high school, as she likes to remind the class. Sally shows up for the exam to find other students poring over some last minute notes. She sees another student holding something that resembles a study guide. “What’s that?” she asks 20 year-old undergrad. “It’s a study guide for the exam,” says 20 yr. old. Student Sally wants to know WHERE she got this study guide. “We got it from Dr. Madge, last week,” undergrad replies. And faster than you can say, “Aw, HELL no!” Sally was in Dr. Madge’s face. The conversation went like this:
Sally: I demand to know why I didn’t get a study guide.
Dr. Madge: Because you weren’t in class last week.
Sally: Why didn’t you send me one?
Dr. Madge: Because it’s also posted on the class website.
Sally: Why didn’t you tell me it would be posted on the class website?
Dr. M.: I believe it says in the syllabus you are responsible for obtaining any missed material.
Sally: Based on this recent turn of events, I no longer feel qualified to take the exam. I am leaving and I will take it next week, when I have had a chance to study using the study guide.
Dr. M.: Um, come with me out into the hallway.They go out into hallway.
Dr. M.: I’m sorry, but you do need to take this exam, today, with everyone else.
Sally: I won’t.
Dr. M.: Then you will lose 5 points every day until you take the exam, per the syllabus.
Sally: Who can I complain to then?
Dr. M.: Department Chair Charlie
Sally: What is his phone number?
Dr. M.: Honestly, I don’t know it off the top of my head.
Sally: Is he available right now?
Dr. M.: I also don’t know his schedule.
Sally: I am going to see him RIGHT now!
Dr. M.: Okay.Remember - Student Sally was NOT a 20-year-old punk kid who thinks the world revolves around her. She is an “adult” in the sense - I guess - that we have all been talking about adults. She probably has a mortgage, a job, we know she has children. And yet, she misses class the week before the exam and is surprised and shocked that her teacher “Mrs. Madge” didn’t send the missed work home with her younger brother and a “Get Well Soon, We Miss You!” note.
Maybe - just maybe - these kids are just reflecting back to us society at large. And since we don’t like what we see, we blame them.
March 26th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Unbelievable! The gall.
March 27th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Ugh. She sounds like a real doll. Loving that good ol’ sense of entitlement!
March 27th, 2007 at 7:53 am
She’s great. One of my colleagues had a student who identified Manet’s “Olympia” as a work by Wallace Mangrove. Wallace Mangrove? Man, we tried to find a Wallace Mangrove out there, but he just does not exist. And this kid really argued for credit on this one because he “really did study a lot.”
March 27th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Wallace? MANGROVE? And he argued it? Oh that’s a hoot!
March 28th, 2007 at 9:42 am
I’m de-lurking just to say that I had a conversation with someone recently, wondering if the world has become more self-absorbed, or is it a generational thing? Not college-age kids, but thirty and forty-year-olds. (I am in my thirties; I primarily associate with other thirty-somethings, so my sample is pretty small.)
If the adults are this bad, I hate to see what their children will be like ten, twenty years down the road.
March 28th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
How rich!
I mainly taught English Comp to ESL students, so my students were not necessarily American. However, every semester I did have at least one conversation like this.
Also, my husband just has gone back to school and every year we vacation with friends in Michigan. For this summer they just picked a date and reserved it without asking us. When I told them that we could not go at that time because it is the first week of my husband’s fall semester, they said, “Can’t he just talk to the instructor and tell him that he needs a vacation?” I explained that 1) it is not good to start a class in this manner and 2) his class is only 9 weeks long. They still didn’t get it. As an ex-instructor I had a good laugh over this for quite obvious reasons.
March 28th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Slaps forehead and shakes head.
HOw did that instructor NOT slap this woman?