meirwen_1988 | If they only knew

Last night, finally, at 2:00 AM, just before the rerun of Revelations came on Bravo, I turned out the light and was, at last, able to fall asleep. At 5:45, just like every other weekday morning since mid-January, my beautiful man came in and woke me up with a gentle touch and a hot cup of tea sitting on the nightstand. Do the math. So, it would be reasonable to ask, why the hell was I up so late when I knew I had to get up so early? Really, I tried to go to bed 4 hours earlier, even turned the light out and everything. There are a lot of reasons why it didn't work; my back's bothering me because I haven't been to the gym since I sprained my ankle in October. My ankle was throbbing because I'd had the nerve to wear shoes with a one inch heel yesterday (you know, the third time you sprain the same ankle, it really doesn't want to heal very well). I'm waiting for a phone call from that school down the road I'm beginning to fear won't come. But mostly, it was my students' fault. You see, I went to bed angry because approximately 30% of my students are...words fail me. This is an EN 102 class. We did a paper early in the semester (comparing 4 versions of Cinderella and the movie Ever After) and we spent a lot of time on how to do MLA, and how you have to give page numbers for quotes and paraphrases and summaries, and how not doing that is plagiarism. On my syllabus it talks about plagiarism--what it is and how to avoid it. They're doing a 2000 word research paper and have to have at least six sources in addition to the book and film they're comparing. They've read chapters on writing research papers. They've read chapters on MLA citations, works cited lists, and bibliographies. We've talked about the chapters after they read them. They've submitted annotated bibliographies. So, on May 2, they had to hand in a 750 word paper on the Titanic. They had a choice of 4 topics. In each topic there was a statement along the lines of, used Lord's book, the documentaries we've watched, the two Titanic films (1956 and 1997), and your own research to answer the question. I included with the assignment sheet for the paper photocopies of the Amazon.com entries for all the filmed works since you can't get the information you need for the Works Cited by just watching the film. When I gave them the assignment I pointed out the attachments and said why I'd given them. Thirty percent of the papers had NO Works Cited list. Of those that did, *half* didn't list the book we read in class (A Night to Remember by Walter Lord). This is the last week of classes and I have a moral dilemna of epic proportions: how do I appropiately respond to their complete lack of actually paying attention while simultaneously respecting that there is a huge difference between their moronic behavior and the behavior of the slackers who didn't even turn in a paper? On Tuesday, May 17 I'll be getting 35 EN 101 papers. On Wednesday I'll be getting 35 101 final exams. On Friday, May 20 I'll be getting 80 EN 102 9 pg research papers AND 80 EN 102 final exams. My grades must be in by 12 Noon on Monday, May 23. I am disinclined to allow rewrites (Morguhn's suggestion) or give them Fs (Rowan's). I'm thinking of saying if they are one of my NAs (not accepted) on the Titanic paper that they can opt to have their final exam grade be recorded twice (the ones who wrote no paper would not get that option). However, right now, I'm so torn between the kind, sympathetic trying to help them grow by correcting their mistakes and the leather jacketed, bourbon shooting, "Nuke 'em" response that I'm almost paralyzed. Suggestions oh wise ones? (I thought this would be a great place to ask since we have former and current students and at least one current student/former teacher in my friends group)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I read the papers from my 600 level course on visual language. I spent weeks working on mine and the rest of the class handed in on average 2 pages of trash.

And people actualy wonder why the Kansas board of ED is entertaining the idea of intelegent design. Education is not getting the best and brightest.

Could you read the now finished entry--yours is one of the responses I most want to read.

(for reasons that passeth understanding, it won't hold my paragraph breaks, so I apologize)

I would get out the red pen and for those that did the paper give them the grade they earned and continue on. For those that did not do the paper, give them the f (even if the work is shoddy those who did it deserve the counting of their efforts)
Man I have been there and don't envy you. I failed half a class of fifth graders once for just the same thing, half assed work and no work. To me it is unethical to compromise your curriculum and standards. Contemporary education has lost its balance between the needs of the student, the needs of society and the goal of the proffesion
There are still the sixty percent that did it the right way, so I would help out the clueless by flunking them and making them take it over so they can make it through the rest of their college years, and pray non of them are ed majors. It would be in the long run the best thing that happened to them, to have to shell out more money to take a 100 level course might just be the needed clue by four.

If you want to be a bastard pass all of them and let them flunk out of college when they hit the 300 and 400 level classes. These are fundimental skills for college citation, of sources, following directions and paying attention.
I hope this helps.

Yes it helps, especially because your last paragraph caused me to break out in laughter that had a distinctly evil edge.

Seriously, though, it did help--Sometimes around here I have the rep as the evil bitch from hell because I actually expect them to use MLA and have at least the parenthetical citations nearly flawless. I just don't think putting the author's name and the page number in parenthesis is all that f***in' hard. Nice to here that my sense that "Hey, this is college and it was in writing" isn't an unreasonable mark by which to set my standards.
Thanks!

I was stunned that the people in my 600 level class needed to learn this stuff. You would think that by now all you would need is a refresher.

Well, is it a Vis. Arts class? I've noticed that some institutions seem to think VA people are only in VA because they can't read and write, so they never actually expect them to. Of course, that's an incredible example of the chauvinism of the text driven part of academia.

So, it could be that they are all products of social promotion. More likely, though, it's that usual end of semester knowledge dump, plus the complete hard drive wipe that happens at commencement with the majority of college students.

To some I would say one has to have a mind to wipe. At this point I am wondering what the big deal about grad schools is, it is just busy work. I am saying this as the token over acheiver.

If they only knew

no subject

I hear you

I am with Ro, mercy makes idiots dumber.

Re: I am with Ro, mercy makes idiots dumber.

Re: I am with Ro, mercy makes idiots dumber.

Re: I am with Ro, mercy makes idiots dumber.

Re: I am with Ro, mercy makes idiots dumber.