And so it's begun

Summer semester.

I have hopes - it seems these classes are more engaged than the "regular" semester classes are. Already they've been contributing things and asking questions.

However, I have two examples of snowflakery to report from the first day. (Or, one snowflake and one clueless person, I'm not sure.)

Clear snowflake: I'm midway through my first class, in the middle of a discussion on ecosystem structure, and a woman walks in my door. She doesn't sit down. She stops me, mid sentence:

"Can you help me out?"

Oh, for Pete's sake.

I look at her, wondering on what planet this kind of thing is appropriate.

She wants to know where her class is. She's in "zero level science" - this is the remediation class that you take if you are homeschooled, or are a foreign student, or - as I suspect is this person's case - you're sufficiently lacking in clue-age that you couldn't get above a 16 (Or whatever it is) in science on the ACT.

The classroom, and where it is, is pretty freaking obvious (or at least I think so) but I explained to her how to get there anyway.

But still: you don't interrupt a prof to ask where your damn classroom is. You walk down the hall until you find it. The fact that the numbers you already walked past are getting higher should be a clue that if you keep walking, eventually the numbers will get high enough that it will be your room.

Grr. Maybe I need to bring it up with the person who teaches the class (a friend of mine) just to clue her in that this student is kind of aggressive and aggressively clueless. Then again, considering the stories she's regaled me with over the years, the cluelessness of this person is actually pretty minor league.

The second person was someone who walked in about 10 minutes before the end of my first class and sat down. I had someone who had been absent at the start so I assumed it was her. I tried to give her a syllabus for the class - and it turned out she was just here for the NEXT class.

Um, ok. I appreciate that you're early but please don't just walk on into the room and sit down.

Kids today. I just don't know. I also have to remind students when we are doing student presentations that if they come late, they need to wait out in the hall until the current presenter has finished up - this is actually more crucial than their walking in on me, because I'm kind of used to it. But you get someone presenting for the first time, they're nervous, and someone barges in the classroom - it's not good.


I also hate to admit it, but in these days of campus shootings, I always jump a little when someone randomly walks in in the middle of class. I may take to closing the door (at least; maybe even locking it too) when class "officially" begins. Except then I know I'd get latecomers pounding on the door.