Ugh

Not too much to say. Busy.

But I have one student I wish would DTFO (as HH says) of my class. This is someone who is CONSTANTLY checking his smartphone. He talks to the people around him,  and when I stop and glare at him he shuts up for a few minutes. He randomly leaves class early. In lab, he does as little work as he can get away with.

This is the second time this guy is taking my class. He failed the first exam.

I'm just done. I predict eventually I'm going to progress from glaring at him to saying something, and then progress to yelling if he doesn't get a clue that WHAT HE IS DOING IS RUDE AND IT PROBABLY CONTRIBUTED TO HIS FAILING THE FIRST GO-ROUND.

He also skips some Fridays because he finds more-fun stuff to do on Fridays (And yes, he essentially told me that).

It's hard not to take all that personally - which I am kind of doing, I admit. There have been a lot of times in my career when "fun" beckoned, but because I take my job seriously, I skipped whatever fun thing I might have done in favor of doing the right thing. And someone blatantly ignoring the class tells me, "I don't think your class is important and I don't think you rate even an iota of my attention."

And yeah, I need to get over that. And teach for the people who DO give a crap, because I have a bunch in that class this semester.

But the talking in class thing HAS to stop. It distracts me, it derails my train of thought, and I'm damned if I'm walking in there with a frigging SCRIPT of what I'm going to say just so Mr. I-don't-give-a-crap can keep up his stupid talking.

I don't even get why this guy is in college. He has a job with a local agency, which is partly why he has this attitude - he knows even if he washes out of the degree, he's still employed. He gives me the strong impression he doesn't care about education, doesn't think we know more than he does....so why is he wasting someone's money (his family's, the taxpayers, or his own future income) to fill a seat and piss me off?