Friday, October 23, 2009

Dear person who chronically skips my class...

You might wish to take note of the fact that you scored a 44% on the first exam, and a 30% on the current exam. Neither of these scores, I am convinced, are my fault, considering that the class means have been around about 70% and I have several students scoring above 90%.

You might also wish to know that if you come into my office in the last week of class and want to know if there is anything you can "do" to salvage your grade, I will very likely tell you, "Build a time machine. Go back to the start of this semester. Come to class, do the work, and study for the exams."

But I won't tell you that, because the irony would be lost on you; you would simply think I'm another mean professor making impossible demands of the students.

2 comments:

Kate P said...

What you just said is the prime example of why I had to tell some of my seniors the other day that I wasn't a fan of senior cut day and missing class in general. Attendance is one of the keys to success. (And I mentioned having graduated _cum laude_ to drive the point home.)

physics geek said...

Sounds like one of my former students. The class average on the first two tests was an 81 or so and this person scored about half that on each. He then complained to the dean that I was unfair in my grading. Unfortunately for the dipstick in question, the dean had copies of both my tests in hand, along with the class average. Oh, and the attendance of little turdwell, which was about 50%. Come to think of it, I should have used his attendance percentage as his grade.