I stayed a little longer.
One of my very gung-ho students (who is grad-school bound) stopped by to look at her final. I didn't think she would, as she got a 149/150 on it and I posted the grades on the online site - I figured she had seen it and wouldn't bother. But she did stop by to look at her final.
Obviously she hadn't seen the online grades, because she looked at the grade of 149/150 and laughed and said, "Dr. Ricki, are you kidding me!?!?!" I told her that she had earned the couple of extra credit points on the exam, and only missed one thing (and she knew already which one it was, she went, yeah, it was THAT topic.)
So I guess she'll be happy when she sees she earned an A. (I also told her that once she got to grad school, if she ever wanted "another pair of eyes" to look at her research proposal or stuff, I'd be willing to do it if she e-mailed it to me. Her interest is in an area I know something about so I feel like I can kind of do a little service by offering to extend my advice to her. I know grad school can be kind of brutal - especially to people who are, like her and like I was, perfectionists who are used to getting perfect scores on things. She commented when I handed back a paper to her, "Wow, I didn't do very well, did I, there's stuff written all over it" and I told her she actually did very well (the second-highest grade in the class) but that she just needed to get used to the fact that in higher levels of education, you get LOTS of feedback, and not necessarily when you've done something wrong.
And perhaps part of the reason I'm willing to help her is that I can look at her and see myself 15 years ago...)
Thursday, December 11, 2008
I guess I'm glad...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Beautiful, Ricki.
A student like that is what teaching is all about. And I hope she does email you a research proposal sometime.
Now there's a payoff for enduring the chilly office. As a (soon to be former) grad student I have to say your students are fortunate to have a prof like you who cares and takes the time to give feedback and talk about things. I had some profs like that, but not the majority. The courses and things I remember most are the ones where the profs really engaged with the class.
See, that's awesome. Good for you. And her.
ricki,
If you would, please e-mail me at lisa.graves@salinecounty.org. I have a teacher/student/parent dilemma I want to run past you.
Post a Comment