Scenes from a classroom

Just a couple of "Front Lines of Education" stories for you today:

1. I have this guy in one of my classes. If you watch NCIS, think of Tony DiNozzo - only without the tv-star good-looks. (And mercifully without the sexual innuendo/borderline harrassment. At least to me. Probably because he knows I'd smack him down fast if he pulled that on me). The kind of person who thinks he's charming and witty - and would be, under certain circumstances (if he were my age and cute and my date, and if I had a few beers in me). But as a student he is mostly annoying.

Because, I get the distinct feeling he's trying to kiss my ass without it looking like he's kissing my ass, but it's still blatantly obvious to me that he's trying to kiss my ass to get me to grade him easier.

Anyway. I was driving the class back (in one of the scary, probably-should-be-retired 15-passenger vans) from a field trip, and he pipes up, "This test we have coming up...is it going to be hard?" (in his "I'm so cute and witty" voice).

"That depends," I respond, giving my favorite non-answer answer, "on how hard you studied."

"Yeah, well...the studying thing and me, we don't work out all that well" was his response. (And I thought: yeah, dude, I know that. I graded your first exam in this class).

Another student asked him where he was from, and he named BigCollegeTown where there's a large and very well respected state school. (As opposed to the third-tier college where I teach). They asked him why he wasn't at Big State School and he began reminiscing about "The Strip" or "Collegetown" or whatever it was called "...where there were like 17 bars in four city blocks."

So apparently, he failed out of Big State School because he liked to drink (and probably scam on girls) more than he liked to study. The thing is - and this is where I kind of scratch my head - he's apparently close to in-process of doing that here (And we have like 3 bars, and they're separated by several miles each).

I mean - in some ways he's a nice guy. But I don't have tremendous amounts of sympathy for people who fail out of a good school because they're lazy and like to party, and then turn around and do the same damn thing that got them kicked out of a prestigious school, here.

It's like Santayana's (or whoever's) definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting to see a different outcome.

2. This one's a little happier. I have a football player in my non majors class. Mostly, he's kind of an annoyance - he's a BMOC and he knows it. He tries to flirt with the girls or chat with his teammate during my class and it drives me up the wall to stop, look at him, get him to shut up, start again, and five minutes later have to do the same thing. (He's also another guy who apparently gets by on charm and good looks. He's tried it on me, but I'm pretty much immune to charm and good looks in a guy when it's also in a package that's under 30 and a student of mine).

Well, the other day I was talking about cloning. And I referred to plant cell cloning and how it's comparatively easy - I have had students (in a plant physiology lab) do it. I remarked, "With the right equipment - which unfortunately this campus doesn't have - and a little training, you could go into a lab and clone a carrot or something. And I literally mean you - you here in this class could do it with training." And Football guy perked up, and asked me, "You mean I could clone a carrot?" And I responded, "yeah - it might take a few tries, even the experts don't have 100% success."

And he responded: "Dang...that's TIGHT."

(I assume in this context that "TIGHT" is a good thing...)

So maybe he's beginning to get a little interested in it. Good, because nextweek is the Biotech Blitz where I hit DNA fingerprinting and GMOs and all that good stuff. And I try to get discussion going - both, where have they heard of this stuff being used (I never have very many CSI watchers in my classes for some reason), and some of the ethical concerns about its use. (It frightens me a little how many of my students would willingly blindly submit DNA samples to be stored in a database so that crime-scene DNA could be quickly matched; I guess they've never heard of evidence tampering or "innocent until proven guilty.")

3. And I just got done talking with a student - and this is something not very pretty about me, but I had kind of written her off because she was one of those sporty cheerleader types who tormented me in high school, and I figured she saw me as even less cool than her mom, and therefore would do as little work for me as possible and not be polite to me and all that...

and she came in to talk about a one-credit-hour arranged-time class (basically a readings type class) that I offer. And she asked me if I taught any other classes in her particular field (I don't). I always take that as a good sign, that they don't hate me as a person and they think I'm a decent teacher, when they ask that.

Well, we talked for about 10 minutes, and I gave her some advice about stuff - and she was really nice. And yeah, I know - I tend to snap-judge people who are sporty and tanned and ponytailed and very obviously into the sorority thing. And I need to stop that - but it's hard, because it calls up bad high school and bad college memories - the mean "popular girls" and how they treated us nurd girls. And you know - she does well in class - maybe she's deep down a nurd girl who has learned how to socialize. But at any rate - yay, for having a pleasant interaction with a student.