Monday, April 30, 2007

argh

You know what frustrates me?

When someone who has done poorly all semester, someone I've warned needs to work harder, who skipped an entire exam, who plagiarized one paper and admits that the second one (handed in late) was "not a very good effort," then comes to me and says:

"I really need a C. Is there anything that I can do?"

I fight my natural temptation to say, "Yes. Build a time machine, go back in time, and study harder. Oh, and write that one paper yourself instead of copying it off of an Internet site that even someone with as few mad skillz as I have could find with a little searching.*"

Instead I say, "No. I'm sorry. I don't offer extra credit."

(Because I know that's what the question was really aimed at.)

(*It occurs to me that if I gave in to my natural inclinations to say certain things, I'd kind of be a female, non-atheist version of House.)

(Is House an atheist? The few episodes I've seen seem to suggest it but it's not entirely clear. I'm coming to be somewhat interested in the show but I can't always watch it either because of my schedule or because sometimes medical shows just depress me)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe it was just me, or maybe the times have changed, but when I was in college (admittedly quite a while ago) it never occurred to me to try to negotiate for a grade. The grade was strictly the result of my exams and papers. Period. Sometimes I thought a professor had strange standards, but it was up to me to try to adjust rather than for him or her to try to adjust to me. Each grade was the result of my own effort--or, in a couple cases, lack of it.

Anonymous said...

Dave,
I graduated in 1999, and I would never thought of begging a professor for extra credit after screwing up all semester, which I'll admit I did a few times in my first couple of semesters before I smartened up and realized the only one who was losing out by slacking in school was ME. If I did poorly, I accepted my poor grade and re-took the course if I needed to.

Emily