Can it be summer?

I'm getting really fed up with a couple students and just want them OUT of my class. (Or want the class to end...I'm switching up in the rotation and will not be teaching this particular class in the fall, so if these folks fail, there's no likelihood of me getting them again in my section).

I have several people who skip regularly, and then cry poor when they miss quizzes, etc. I also have people who get sick, miss, then come to me after the fact - after I have handed back the quiz - and want a make-up. So far I've said no, but I'm expecting someone to go all Office of Disability Concerns on me at some point.

(My official policy is I need prior notification, even if it's an e-mail the morning of. Interesting how some students can manage that and some can't)

I also have one person who's earning 10%s on the quizzes. These are not hard quizzes....like definitions of terms and stuff. This is someone who sits next to someone who is either her boyfriend or a boy she wants to impress (I can't tell, but from his contemptuous treatment of her I think it's the second) and doesn't pay attention.

And all this stuff makes me crazy...all of the "let's sit in class and be dumb," all of the noise, all of the people groaning when I expect them to know something.

You know what? I'm tired too. I'm sick of being in a too-warm classroom too. But it's my job to prepare you for whatever future classes you may take (or, conversely, persuade you to major in something else), so I keep doing it.

(And you know? It really doesn't help to read about the GSA wasting my tax dollars on junkets places, or the Secret Service hiring hookers in Colombia....when I wind up buying my own pens and notebooks rather than using the departmentally-provided ones because I think, "What if I wind up using it for non-academic purposes, that would be like stealing." My mom used to say she taught me and my brother to be too nice; I think she may also have taught us to be too ethical.)