The importance of persistence

I was reminded yet again yesterday of how I grew up relatively "privileged."

I don't mean in the sense of money (though we had enough of that for the necessities and many of the comforts, if not luxuries), but in the sense of what my parents taught me. How much they cared, so that they gave their kids what we needed to succeed in life.

A common kid-complaint is, "This is hard." At first, fractions are "hard." Or long division is. Or algebra. Or trigonometry. Or something in physics.

My parents had slightly different reactions to my (and my brother's) protests that something was "hard."

My mother would remark: "Few things worth doing are easy." And you know, I tended to believe that. Especially coming from her: she grew up in (what I now know was) near-poverty, she was the first in her family to go to college, she worked long hours in the summer to try to earn part of her tuition, she sought out scholarships and what work-study type opportunities existed so she could go through college. She wound up earning a Ph.D. and teaching college (until first I, then my brother, came along, and she decided she would really rather stay home and raise us than continue to work and pay for childcare. And luckily, my father was doing well enough that we could just manage that financially. As I said, we didn't have a lot of material luxuries - at least, compared to the others in our small town (on a global scale we would have been fantastically rich), but we were rich in a lot of important things).

My father responded slightly differently. He'd say to me: "I know it's hard. But you're smart, and you can figure it out." And that always made me feel better. I think part of it was that my distress was being acknowledged - and at the same time, instead of allowing me to give in and give up, my dad told me he knew I could do it, just try harder, work harder.

That was actually kind of the theme when we ran into problems growing up: Try again if you didn't get it the first (or second, or third) time. See if you can find someone who can explain it differently if you don't understand. Try looking at it a different way. Go to the library and see if you can find a book to look it up in (to this day, that's my first recourse when I don't know or don't understand something: find a book that explains it). If you have to, put it aside for a while, rest, and come back to it when you're calmer.

And I realize now how important that was, and how valuable, and how grateful I am to my parents for instilling that in us. I find now when I'm faced with what seems like an intractable problem, I get stubborn: I say to myself, "You're smart. You can figure this out" (echoes of my dad's advice!). And I dig in, and most of the time I solve the problem.

But I often see students who haven't learned this - who have, apparently, been allowed in the past to give up on "hard" stuff. And it's frustrating to teach people with that attitude.

An example, from lab. I teach a non-majors bio lab. We were doing osmosis this week, which, while it's not a super-hard topic, can be confusing if you've never worked with it before. During the lab, one group of guys called me over. "We aren't sure we understand this question" one of them said.

So I used my usual method: I asked them to tell me what they did know and did understand, and then started asking them questions based on that and aimed at getting them to what they didn't know.

Almost at the same moment, the light came up in all of their eyes. "Ohhhhhhh" one guy said. "I get it now." And he started to explain the answer to the question - and another guy picked up where he left off. And I smiled and told them they had it. And they thanked me for the help.

Then, later, one of the women in the class came up to me. "This is hard." she said. "I don't get it." So I tried the same technique- which, when it works, works very well, and I think the students remember better when I "force" them to come up with the answer on their own. She was having none of it though. "This is HARD." she repeated. "I Don't Get It."

I tried to help her as much as I felt OK doing but she just clamped down. Later, I saw her pulling the same thing on the TA in the class - he tried the same method I used and she still clamped down and finally just gave up. And that frustrates me, because everyone else in that class of 24 more or less "got" osmosis after working on it for a while. And she just decided to shut down and decide it was "too hard" or too much work.

As I said, it's frustrating teaching people with that mindset. And I wonder if there's a way of getting them out of it once they've hit 20 or so - I tend to think that if you develop the "I can figure this out!" mindset, it's going to happen as a result of early experience - like what I had with my parents - where, when something was found to be "hard," I was encouraged to keep working at it until I got it, or get extra help (in the form of tutoring or having it explained a different way).

(An aside here: that's the real source of self-esteem, IMHO: taking on a challenge that's somewhat difficult and then realizing along the way, "Hey! I get this!" or "hey! I can do this!" Not being told you're Special and Unique and there's No One Like You)

The other thing that the training I got from my parents did, was that I realized "I could do that thing in the past that I thought was so hard, and once I mastered it, it was easy. So this thing that looks hard now, if I work on it, eventually it will get easier."

But as I said: I'm not sure how to instill this in kids if they're not getting it early on, at home. (And even if primary school teachers try to instill it, if it's not being supported at home, it still may not take).

I might even go so extreme as to say that a big part of America's success over the years comes from people having said, "This is difficult, but I can do it if I keep working and keep trying." People who clamp down when things get hard and refuse to keep trying don't seem to get very far (at least in my limited experience teaching college, and observing other grad students when I was in grad school).

And so it always worries me to see someone who does that "I can't DO THIS" over something, particularly something that other people around them are mastering. It's one thing to try repeatedly and not be able to (I am not much of a singer and I acknowledge that); it's totally another to not even want to try.

Why do I do this to myself?

So, I had gotten the evaluation comments from last semester.

One memorable one (of course I remember the negative ones and forget the positive ones) declared my ecology labs "useless." And I was walking around since I read that, thinking about it. Wondering, what can I do to make them better? Taking the students out into the field more, as much as I'd like to do it, is not feasable, given how Motor Pool works around here and the near-fascist they have in charge of it. (And the shifting rules, and the fact that those rules shift without anyone being told...)

Anyway, I thought I had halfway decent "indoor" labs. Some are simulations, and since I'm a low-tech sort of person, they're actual physical simulations - students manipulating things or counting things, instead of using the computer to do it all. And I was thinking, maybe I just need to give in and look at the computer simulations (though given our current budget situation, maybe we couldn't afford the site licenses).

So anyway, here I am, all inferiority-complexed about my sad little labs and all. And then yesterday, I had my students working on one (it's a big simulation, and they have to do it out in the student lounge area). One of my former students came out there to study for a test in the class he was having the next hour, and he saw them working, and said, mostly to himself (but I overheard) "Ecology labs. Those were always interesting labs."

And you know, I felt good for a moment. A moment. And then I said to myself, "Wait, he was a good student. He earned an A. Of course he'd think the labs were interesting."

Why do I do that? Why should I discount a "good" student's opinion, and value the anonymous opinion of someone who might be a slacker? I've also had cases of students come back to thank me and stuff, and I find myself thinking, "Well, of course they think I was a good teacher; they'd think anyone was."

I think it's probably because I was a decent student myself, and I tended to be more "generous" in my opinions of faculty than some of my fellow students. It was because I really did enjoy nearly all of my classes, and so it was easier for me to put up with people's quirks. Or to be tolerant of those branded "boring" by others.

But couldn't, just as easily, the good students be the ones whose opinions should be more heavily weighted? Couldn't they be the more critical ones - especially, for example, if a class was too easy or contained information that was not useful?

One thing that frustrates me about myself is that I am too prone to write off any praise I receive, but really pay attention to and mull over any criticism - even non-constructive criticism (How does being told your labs are "useless" help you to improve them, anyway?)

On the other hand...

I did fieldwork with a student this afternoon. And am reminded that I am not teaching for the CryBaby WhinyPants of the world, but for students who give a damn, like the student I worked with today does.

She is a "non traditional" student; we get a lot of them. They tend to either be people who are former military, people who have been out in the workforce and want a change, women whose kids are grown and want to complete the degree they didn't complete before (or who want a whole different career). In other words, people who have experience in life, who have maturity, and who know why they're in college.

The woman I worked with today is fairly typical. She's a couple years older than I am (she mentioned one day that she was 43). She's divorced, her kids are grown and out of the house, and she decided that she was sick of working as an ambulance driver/EMT so she wanted to go into conservation - particularly, the plant sciences end of things.

She expresses considerable frustration to me with "these conservation boys" - the guys I was talking about yesterday, who are all about phoning it in and who seem to think the perfect job will magically appear for them when they graduate.

She actually believes my advice to "do as many different things as you can; learn as much different stuff as you can, because you never know when particular knowledge or a particular skill will come in handy."

She also really loves what she is doing. And that makes things a lot different.

She's a very talkative person, and I admit (I hope this doesn't sound too churlish) I could do without some of the constant chatter in the field. But I'm willing to overlook that because she cares.

She was out doing field research with me this afternoon - for no pay, for no extra credit, simply because she wanted to learn the plants common around here and knew that would be a good way to do it.

(She may well mind up being a "second Dan" - Dan was a student we had a few years back, who went on to good success in grad school, in part because he was the sort of person who joined on as a "field hand" on about any research that was made available to him. And he also worked really hard in his classes. (He was former military)).

So I'm happy to work with her. She was already knowing most of the familiar species by this afternoon, including some of the grasses (grasses can be tricky).

I know some people promote an idea that 18 year olds should either be required to do mandatory military service (as in Israel) or do some kind of mandatory service for two years, the idea being in part to mature them up for college. I admit I tend not to like that idea; the idea of anything that is a "one size fits all" solution means there are some people who will be ill-served. (For example: I was ready for college when I began. And I would have been irked to have to spend two years sitting behind a desk processing papers (which is what I might have wound up doing in the military; I suspect some of the medical stuff I had going on at that time would have kept me from the more active forms of service) or washing bedpans in a hospital. (Now, maybe in a more cosmic sense, it would have been "good" for me, but still, it would have irked me). But I see so many of the "non traditional" students who come in excited and ready to learn and who go the extra mile, and so many of the 18 year olds who come in ill-prepared and with bad attitudes...and well, I just wonder. I wonder some times if some of the immaturity that I rail against could be burned off a little by a couple years military or civic service...

But anyway, it made for a good afternoon. She thanked me when we were done working - I really should have been the one thanking her because having her along made the sampling go much faster and made me get done earlier.

But it is nice to have your expertise appreciated once in a while.

I could go for this...

Simon Fraser University* is instituting a separate kind of failing grade for serious cases of cheating.

I could go for that. Speaking as someone who dealt with a pretty egregious plagiarism case not all that long ago. I think it is potentially helpful to differentiate between, "They just couldn't cut it in class" and "They failed because they were dishonest." (Also, at least where I teach, "honestly" acquired Fs can be expunged if the student re-takes the class and gets a considerably improved grade).

I wouldn't use it for, say, someone with wandering eyes on a test. (I do give zeroes on that particular test) or for someone who plagiarized a "minor" paper in a class. But for someone who plagiarized the "big" class paper, the one worth as much as an exam, or a more advanced student plagiarizing or otherwise falsifying a research project, I'd do it.

I will say in my department there are a few students that we've warned not to come to certain of us for recommendations due to their history of having cheated. In fact, one of my colleagues made two of his students cry.

He caught them looking off of each other's tests and sharing answers. So he called each one separately into his office and went through the spiel about how there are certain ethics in the Conservation field, that the field is pretty tight about those ethics, and that violators will often find themselves having a hard time getting a job.

He went on to talk about how he was disappointed in them, and how he expected better of them. He finished up by saying, "Don't come to me for recommendations; you won't like what I will write"

And each cried.

(And they were GUYS. Big, ordinarily-tough conservation guys).

Because I think people who are honest should be rewarded, and people who cheat their way through should go to the back of the line.


(*And I have to admit I snort a bit with laughter whenever I see the acronym. Too bad it's not Simon T. Fraser University)

Oh back to school, back to school...

There's a Henry James quotation that goes, "Summer afternoon, summer afternoon...the two most beautiful words in the English language."

Well, I think we've established here I'm not particularly a fan of summer.

But I do love back to school. Always have. Even as a kid, when kids were supposed to groan and roll their eyes over the event, I secretly loved it.

I loved everything to do with it - the chance to learn new things, to have a schedule again, to (maybe) make a friend in class this year (and later on: maybe to make a BOYfriend in class).

I loved all the back-to-school planning: buying new shoes (a "good" pair of oxfords and a pair of tennis shoes for gym). Buying new clothes (at least a few). All of the school supplies: folders and crayons and pencils and everything all NEW, all unmarked-on and ready to be used the first time.

I loved going to the school (I don't know if all school districts did this but mine did) a few days early with my parents to find out who my "homeroom" teacher and other teachers were, and to see the list of kids in my class, and to figure out where my classrooms were - the halls still mostly empty and echoey, still kind of smelling of summer, but with that distinct feel of anticipation that back-to-school brought.

I also liked back-to-school because it felt like the beginning of fall. I have always loved fall more than the other seasons.

And so back-to-school felt like all kinds of good things starting up. The world seemed full of hope.

And I still feel that way, even now that I'm on the other side of the desk (and I don't get long summers off because I choose to teach summers). The world seems full of hope again. Two of the textbooks I have are new editions (even though at least one doesn't seem to have changed much, at least I can replace the old broken-spined copy I've been using for a few years).

Last week I cleaned my office over at school - I have a clear desktop to work on again, all of the old papers from the summer are gone. Things feel like a fresh start. (One of the best parts of being a professor, I think, is every four months or so you get a fresh start with new classes.)

Even though the economy still kind of sucks, and even though we've weathered some bad stuff (a big budget cut, a top administrator leaving under a bit of a cloud), the world still feels filled with hope.

9 am today I start my first class.

Quiet

Yeah, I know, I sometimes get quiet in the summer. There are a couple reasons for that.

First of all, it's hot. It's actually been a bit hotter this summer than some recent summers. And the heat kind of saps my energy - when I come home I just want to do my self-mandated hour of piano practice and then read until it's time for bed.

And second, the summer classes take a lot of my energy. But in a good way. The students are a lot better and more involved (by and large) than they are in the regular semester (especially the Gen Bio non-majors students), and they ask a lot of tough questions and kind of require me to stay on my toes a little more. And it takes a little more energy teaching. But as I said, in a good way. I'd rather have students who ask questions and challenge me and want to know more about stuff and want to know the "why" of stuff instead of people who sit there like passive receivers.

I don't really have any "foolish student stories" either for the summer - aside from that one lazy instance of people thinking they could get away with plagiarized reports (and two of the three came and apologized to me for it later), I don't really have a lot of problems. Which is good. (knocking wood right now, thinking of last summer's debacle with the guy who wanted to claim that he deserved a better grade because "other people" cheated).

So I go in every morning and kind of pour myself out, then go home in the evenings and try to renew for the next day. It's good, just very tiring.

Interesting

Or perhaps not.

Here's a rough breakdown of exam grades, related to student behavior in the class:

Present every day, sits in front 2 rows, takes notes, asks questions: 88-97
Present every day, sits in the back, seems to daydream part of the time: 70-75
Present most days but sits in the back and I've had to speak to them for carrying on side conversations: 65-70
Skips a lot: 60-69
Only shows up on test days, apparently reads textbook though: 48-55

Of course, the thing is, the people in the last three groups generally don't imagine that correlation exists. They are more prone to blame me for being "boring" or "not teaching well."

the quiet hum of busy-ness

Two reasons for the title.

First, that's me this week - it is a busy week. One of our grad students (I am on her committee) is defending on Thursday. And there's a bunch of other work-stuff to be done. (This morning, campus is closed because of bad weather - so I am at home, trying to finish one of the books a student chose for Directed Readings).

But the real reason for the title is that is the sound you hear in a good lab. A lab that works, that the students find challenging but not frustrating.

I enjoy teaching labs. The situation is more relaxed than a lecture class (and yes, I am one of those evil-according-to-the-educrats profs who still lectures. What can I say? I teach the sciences. By and large it is the most efficient way to convey information. Believe me, I have tried the "read the chapter and we'll discuss" thing - test scores were a lot lower and the students did not seem to grasp the material as well).

In lab, you can talk more-or-less "privately" to individual people - in class, if someone has a question or of a discussion gets going, anything you say is for the class at large, for public consumption. In lab, you can talk quietly to one person, you can deal with their particular confusion or problem, and you don't have to worry about phrasing it in a way that will make sense for anyone else.

The other thing is you get to see more of the personalities of individual students. Some are quiet and workmanlike - after the introduction, they get their supplies, sit down, and you don't hear from them again until they're done. Some people are kind of slapdash, trying to finish as fast as possible so they can leave. (Generally the labs I do are self-paced for individuals or small groups; if I do a debriefing I wait until the next lecture section. It doesn't work well to have one group finish in 45 minutes and then sit around rolling their eyes and making comments about the super-diligent people who want to take the full time to do everything just so). Some people have a lot of questions, others you maybe have to press a bit to be sure they DON'T have questions. Some people want to talk about something from lecture or clear up some kind of logistics point.

So I tend to circulate around the class helping people, seeing how things are going, asking questions, discussion. This semester I have a TA who has HAD the classes (and mirabile dictu, I have a TA for both my labs who has HAD the labs - so he can answer a lot of the questions, which frees me up for more leisurely discussion with other groups).

There's a point I've noticed, about midway during a "good" lab, where there's relatively little talking going on - everyone's settled down to the task at hand, people are working, things are making sense, data are being generated and interpreted. It's a good feeling. It's about the "rightest" feeling of teaching there is - knowing the students are understanding, knowing that (at least some of) the students are happy at their task. You don't have to do much but be on hand to answer questions or to be a sounding board for potential interpretations of results. It's sort of a peaceful feeling - sort of a surrendering-of-control that is kind of nice. It's now the students' responsibility to figure stuff out, to do the work. If someone complains that the lab failed, or that they didn't get it, it's not that I taught it badly - because here are six other groups clicking away and doing what needs to be done.

There are also nice little "eureka" moments - one lab we do is a very simple natural selection simulation, and one guy doing it remarked, "Oh, so there can be random stuff too - like a predator with a really high score doesn't get near any prey, he may be the "best possible" genetically at getting prey but he will still die out" - things that are maybe hard to convey in lecture, but in practice the students get them.

I think some of the labs are enjoyable, too because they are practical. My soils TA remarked the other day that "Soils lab is a fun lab." He went on to explain: "You're doing stuff that matters. Stuff that you might need to know how to do in your job." Yes, I have them do all of the simple basic testing that you can do on a soil. (Another thing I do, which I think helps the lab a lot - the first lab is taking the students out to a local natural area, having them find locations on a soils map, and then collect the soil they and their lab partner will be analyzing. So they're always working on the same soil - they get to build up a picture of the details of it - and it's something they kind of have "ownership" of because they chose the site. It's little things like that which help a lab along, I think.)

Labs are one of the best parts of teaching.

hah.

One of the conservation guys in my lab this afternoon had a funny shirt.

It had a picture of a buck deer, and the words: "Deer: the other red meat." On the buck were little arrows pointing to the various cuts, naming them, and telling what they were good for.

I'm not a hunter, but as a plant ecologist I've come to consider deer (at least in the population sizes present in much of the US today) a pest species of sorts. So I have absolutely no problem if someone wants to convert a few deer into backstrap or pot roast.

A lot of the conservation students have funny t-shirts they wear. One of my favorites was the big guy (and he was a BIG guy) who had a camouflage shirt that said on the front, in small white letters, "you can't see me."

Some of our conservation students can be kind of problem people - but then again any group can. But I appreciate the sense of humor that most of them seem to have.

graduation

Some of my colleagues kind of roll their eyes about all the stuff surrounding graduation - the pomp, the ritual, all of that. I frankly kind of like it. I like it the same way I like the liturgical stuff we do at church - it is as if it gives a framework to the year, there's a backbone there.

Even though there can be changes - sometimes scary changes - going on in the outside world, graduation (and the liturgical year) remind you that there's a basic continuity to things. That even though bad things may be going on "outside," there are still good things that happen.

Our speaker this year was better than most - a retired Air Force Colonel. He spoke about a variety of things, the typical "you make your dreams come true by setting goals and working toward them" statements (well, that IS true. And I do think people need to be reminded of that; it seems these days there are an awful lot of people who have lofty dreams but either don't know how to or don't want to build the ladder, so to speak, that they can climb to reach those dreams).

But he also made another comment that struck me - he was in the military during Vietnam, and so he knows whereof he speaks - but he mentioned that he thought his dreams as a young man might not come true because of "war, an energy crisis, a recession, and social unrest. Sound familiar?" He also remarked that the fears and hopes of the graduates today are probably very similar to those of graduates in 1915, 1933, 1942, 1952, 1968...that we have survived WWI, the Depression, WWII, the Korean Conflict, the Cold War, Vietnam...and through all that, though outside circumstances might make attaining dreams more DIFFICULT, it did not make them IMPOSSIBLE.

And then there was the long list of graduates going through. There is always at least one funny/cute/touching moment during this, and this year did not disappoint: a young woman, crossing the stage, had her family clap and cheer. Then, a millisecond after the clapping/cheering ended, a woman yelled out "That's my BABY!!!!" Hahahahaha. We have a lot of students who are "first generation" college students, that is, they are the first ones in their families to earn a college degree. So the parents get really excited and involved at graduation and it's lots of fun.

I will say there were air horns again.

Please, please, please, please: if someone in your family is graduating, especially if it's an indoor graduation in an arena, please resist the temptation to bring an air horn and shoot it off. I know I gripe about this every year but it really is kind of painful for some of us sitting down on the floor. And it's kind of tacky. (And not tacky in a good way.)

The other thing that bugs me - once again, the Dean of Students had to stop and wait in a few cases for the noise to die down before she could read the next name. And that's kind of rude, for people to do that. Oh, I don't mind the cheering and clapping - in fact, I would be very sad if someone went through and NO ONE clapped or cheered for them. But I am talking about cheering, hooting, whistling, screaming, setting off air horns, and stomping that lasts for two or three minutes after the name. That is just rude to the next person in line who deserves their moment in the spotlight.

(I will say with a bit of pride that NONE of the Arts and Sciences' graduates families/friends did that. It was actually mainly the B-school people's friends (I assume it was friends; it was mostly 20-something voices doing the screaming). I don't know. I understand the joy, I understand the relief if it's someone who almost didn't make it...but still it seems wrong to me for the next person in line to have to wait extra long so their name won't get drowned out in the din.)

The other thing I have to say? I've been through four graduations, if you count high school as well. In no case do I specifically remember the applause or cheering - I was far more concerned with (a) juggling my diploma cover and whatever awards I was handed (and the flowers my dad handed me at my Ph.D. graduation - he was on the podium as a department chair and had arranged to be allowed to jump up and hand me a bouquet of red and white flowers [the school colors] as I was crossing the stage) and (b) composing my face for the obligatory photo so I was neither scowling nor grinning like a fool. (I do not photograph well so I always have to think hard about my expression before being photographed). So I remember going through graduation, but I don't remember the applause at the moment as much as I do people coming up and congratulating me afterward.

But still. Even with the horrible air horns and the ill-mannered people, I enjoy graduation. I enjoy being able to applaud for the students our department graduates (and there were a bunch this year, including a young African man who has hopes and dreams of getting his MD here, and going back to Africa to serve as a medical missionary. I hope he achieves that dream.) And I do kind of enjoy the formality of it. There is so little left in academia that is formal and kind of ritualized, and I have to admit I think a little formality is a good thing.

And also, graduation is a nice ending point for the semester - you can forget all the exam questions that you read students' answers to and went, "The heck? They didn't even answer what I asked!" or you can put aside the people who came at the last minute with problems (one of my colleagues said she had people crying in her office every day this week. She teaches Genetics and Cell and Molecular Biology, two of the tougher courses, so I guess she does get stuck with people who are unhappy at times). You can put all that aside and enjoy the fact that there ARE people who have succeeded, who are graduating, who are going on to medical school or grad school or to jobs or (in a few cases) back home to raise their kids (because that's what they want).

I guess I'm glad...

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...)

the end is near...

I actually think the person who made this up was NOT a prof, because:

a. The "come crying to prof" section should be bigger
b. There should be a "when he/she doesn't have posted office hours, and I am angry that he/she wasn't in even though it's 7 pm on a Wednesday"

and

c. There should be a "On the very last day of the semester to ask for extra credit" section.

I should probably make an emended one and post it on that site, but it would probably never get up, and anyway, I still have 12 finals to grade today.

Happy

I have to say, this is one of the best ecology classes I have had. Two people so far (there are a couple to go) have earned perfect scores on their research presentations - that nearly never happens. They're good. Maybe not ESA good, but certainly regional-level meeting good, which is better than I usually expect. (These are undergrads, mostly juniors, a few seniors or sophomores).

And even better, some of the projects have generated good questions and discussion from the "audience" (the other students in the class). I'm always happy to see that because that means the other students are paying attention and are engaged with the topics.

I think part of this may be because a number of the students chose more "innovative" projects - not the same old, "what time of day do deer move the most" or "how do different soil amendments affect plant growth" or "what form of sugar attracts the most ants" that some people choose (and I try hard to steer students away from). I think also a lot more people took real "ownership" of their projects - it was more an "opportunity" to learn or to answer a question they were wondering about than something they just "had" to do, and did grudgingly - a couple tailored their projects to subfields they are thinking of going into, a couple people did research on land their families owned where they had noticed and wondered about things (patterns of hog behavior, for example) and used the project as a chance to answer that question.

So I'm pretty happy. It's been a lot more interesting to grade these and I think the students are finding the talks a lot more interesting to listen to.

funny how that works out...

I gave an exam in one of my classes today. I have three categories of people in this class:

1. People who are always there, who pay attention, who ask questions, who are respectful.

2. People who are there most of the time, but who like to chat with their friends and screw off a little in class, meaning I need to stop sometimes to glare at them to get them to shut up.

3. People who can't be bothered to come to class at all. (I don't require attendance, for reasons you will see in a moment...suffice it to say, things have a way of working out).

By and large, the grade breakdown was this:

Group 1 got almost all As and Bs. The top 7 or so grades were from this group.

Group 2, a few got Bs but most got Cs, and a few Ds.

Group 3? Ds and Fs. In fact, my biggest FAIL was someone I suspected of looking off another paper, but didn't have enough evidence to feel comfortable yanking it out of his hands and declaring him a cheater. (But, interesting...on several of the calculations, his parameters were based on those given on the ALTERNATE form of the test, that is, the one the people on either side of him had. Doing Forms A and B (and even C and D if necessary) are very much my friend.)

I'm not quite sure if it makes me a hostile vindictive wench to feel pleased that the people who put minimal effort in earned the worst grades, or if it makes me a Champion of Fairness to feel pleased that the people who put the most effort in earned the best grades.

More teaching and a question

Thanks, guys. I probably need to keep a link to that post somewhere, and look it up periodically, just to remind myself.

I did have something weird happen today. It was lab, which means the dynamics of the class are kind of relaxed. But I had a student make a TOTALLY inappropriate (like, sexually inappropriate) joke right in front of me.

I mean, REALLY inappropriate. Not like blush a little and move on inappropriate (and though I am a prude in some ways I can also appreciate a good raunchy joke), it was more like Oh My Goodness My Jaw Is Hanging Open I canNOT Believe You Said That And Do You Kiss Your Girlfriend With That Mouth? inappropriate.

All I could do was kinda go "Uh...buh..." and change the subject.

I think he realized that he had crossed a serious line because one of the women over near him smacked him, and then he got bright red. But still - one of the more bizarre moments I've experienced.

****

And (how's THIS for a non sequitur), here's the question:

We are talking about doing another Youth Movie Night in a few weeks. Do any of you with teen and pre-teen kids (boys especially) have good but fairly clean (this IS church group after all) movies to recommend? PG rating would be ideal, PG-13 is ok provided the 13 isn't for too many sweary bits or too many nudie bits. (And the less taking-of-His-name-in-vain, the better).

I'm thinking one of the sports movies that's come out over the past few years...I suggested "Miracle" (the one about the 1980 Olympic hockey team) but I'm afraid that as this group is all too young by 15 or so years they might not get into it).

I've seen "Remember the Titans" and I remember liking it, but I was (a) exhausted and (b) trapped on a shuttle bus at the time, so I don't remember whether there was much in the way of "inappropriateness" in it.

Also it would be ideal if the movie was less than 2 hours long, so the Lord of the Rings epic, though it might be well-received, is probably out for this particular movie fest.

I showed National Treasure a few years ago and the kids seemed to enjoy it but I've seen the sequel and wasn't that impressed. And Apollo 13 didn't go over as well as I'd hoped (and it also had more, um, questionable bits in it... I know the kids SEE worse on a regular basis on TV but I do like to keep some standards considering it's Youth Group.)

There are a lot of cartoons or kid-movies I like, but as these are teen boys, it's not "cool" for them to like such movies...even if they really, deep-down, do. Which is why I was thinking some kind of good sports-movie might work, especially if it has some subtle or not-so-subtle message like "don't be mean to the Black guys just because they're Black" or "Sometimes you can succeed at things that people tell you you won't succeed at if you work really hard" or even just "Teamwork is cool"

THIS is why I do it.

I needed to be reminded of something like this, especially after my crummy summer class.

A student in my class - the one where I have them do an independent research project - asked to be let into the lab today so she could put some of the plant matter she's collecting in the drying oven, so she can then get the biomass and (later) the calorie content of the forage (by burning it in a calorimeter).

As I was showing her were all the stuff she needed was, she said, "I'm so excited to be doing this! This is so neat. I've never had the opportunity to do anything like this before; I've always had to do labs where we kind of knew what the result was going to be even before we started and where we knew that hundreds of people had done the exact same thing in prior years."

Yup, that's it. That's why I require the independent research project. To give people like her the opportunity to do this thing - and hopefully enjoy it and learn from it.

I'm not doing it for the people who might cheat on their results.
I'm not doing it for the people who phone it in and then are jerks to me when they didn't get the grade they thought they should get.

I'm doing it for the people who give a damn.

Now, if I can just remember that all the time...

I hate it when

I'm grading a student test, I read an answer to a question everyone else has gotten, and my response is:

"the Hell?"

Yeah, that was 10 points that dude just lost.

One good thing

I wonder if I have perhaps been sent a better class this fall, to make up for the troublesome class (the one with Entitlement Boy) over the summer.

It's the planning-stage time for their independent projects, and I've had more people come to me with good ideas this semester. (And fewer come in and throw up their hands and say, "I don't know what to do" and when I ask them what in ecology interests them, they shrug and say "I don't know...I can't think of anything.")

Some of the projects have been unusual. One person wants to do community surveys of shelf fungi in a couple different forests (I have never had anyone propose a fungus project before; most people at this level seem distinctly uninterested in fungi, unless you're talking about them as a pizza topping). Another one proposed a project that is probably too complex for the level of equipment and analysis we can do here (too bad, because it was a really good one) involving looking at a disjunct population of insects. And a couple other people have approached me with, "I've collected these data as sort of a side project on this other project I'm doing, could I analyze them and write them up for this class?" As long as they're not double-dipping (and in both cases this semester, they aren't), I'm happy to do that: they have a project already underway!

Also, they seem in general to have better attendance (though that might change; often as the semester rolls on attendance declines. I'm actually considering, next semester, doing a penalty of five points for every unexcused absence over, say, 4 absences. I hate doing it but I'm beginning to think I hate doing exam reviews to the six or seven students who are earning As anyway more. And I hate showing up on a Friday morning and finding only the high-dedication people there.) And they discuss more, and they seem to be better about answering my questions. (Though that may be only because I threatened to call on people randomly if no one answers.)

And I have a TA. He's actually IN the class, but that's no biggie, I don't have the TA grade anyway. And he's very responsible, so it's nice (for a change) to be able to give someone a list of "I'd like you to do these things to prep for lab" and then show up and find all the things ready to go. It's funny how important that is and yet how small it seems to write it out. It's very helpful to have a good lab-prep person.

perspective

My former student DID call around lunchtime - she'd been out of town for work earlier that week, was having to re-pack for a trip she was going on this coming week, and "things were just crazy."

So she came in late in the day and did the stuff we needed to have done.

Because she didn't HAVE to do this for us, and because she drove her own vehicle some 50 miles (each way) to do so, I insisted on taking her out for dinner.

And we got to talking. And eventually the conversation came around to the classes I teach, one of which she had taken. And I told her about entitled-boy from this summer, the one who claimed the others were cheating, and so he deserved a higher grade. (I didn't name names but it wouldn't have mattered anyway; she doesn't know anyone attending the college right now).

She agreed it was a fishy strategy to try. And then we got to talking about cheating and plagiarism. And I talked about how much I hated the knowledge that some students were cheating but I couldn't catch it or prove it. (I do come down hard on people who plagiarize or who blatantly cheat on tests. They get a 0 for whatever it is, with no option for a re-do. And if they do it more than once - no one ever has - I plan to haul them up in front of the Student Affairs Committee. And their butts would very likely be bounced out).

Anyway, I talked about how much I hated it, and about how I felt like it hurt the honest students - like, if someone could get a B.S. degree having cheated their way through, didn't that take away from the effort of a person who came by that same degree by honest work?

And she told me a couple of things that made me think about it differently.

First, she asked me: did people cheat when you were in college? Yeah, I said, I suppose they did, though I never really paid any attention to it; I was so focused on doing my work that I didn't really care too much about what other people were doing.

Well, she asked, do you feel like your degree is any less because some of those people cheated? Do you feel like your accomplishments are any less?

No, of course not.

And she observed: she knew people in her graduating class at high school who were terrible cheaters. The guy who was slated to be valedictorian was not allowed to be after having been caught plagiarizing.

And she said: I didn't do that hot in high school. But I always knew that whatever grades I got, good or bad, were grades I earned. That I got it on my own merits and not by cheating. That even if I was a failure and a loser, at least I was an honest failure and loser.

(This is not someone who turned out to be a failure and a loser, trust me. She has a good career and she's quite brilliant at it.)

She also listed a whole bunch of names - kids I had had in my classes. All of them people who had gone to college with her. All of whom had gone on to good careers (or who are working on Ph.D.s now) in their field. And she pointed out: all of these are people you've continued to hear from and hear about. They're the ones presenting at the state Academy of Science meetings. They're the ones with publications. They're the ones winning awards. And they're all students I knew who would rather have ripped their right arms off than have cheated on something.

And then she said (without naming names this time) that there were students that were known (either to both faculty and students, or in some cases just to other students) to have been cheaters and plagiarists. And you don't hear anything about them now! They're not working in their field.

And while that's not always the case (she shared some hair-raising stories about a few old high-school classmates who were caught in major acts of cheating, one of whom is now a fairly high mucky-muck in a school system), in a lot of cases cheating either catches up with the person - because they don't have the chops to make it in their field. Or the person lacks the drive and motivation to do something with their life; that cheating is just a symptom, rather than the cause, of their problems.

So I don't know. Part of me, as I've said before, just kind of wants to throw up its hands and go, "It's THEIR souls," meaning, if someone decides to cheat it is not my fault and though I should try to catch and punish the blatant examples, I cannot stop someone from doing something that is wrong. But on the other hand, I do wish I could stop all cheating - or rather, I wish I could get the kids to LOVE the subject so much, to care about it, to have the necessary ethical feelings, that they don't WANT to cheat.

And realistically, that will never happen. I can't reach 100% of them...some of them won't be inspired because of my personality/their personality type issues. Some of them just won't be inspired because they're in the wrong field. Some of them may still be too immature. Some of them may be too far gone.

I used to have a little 3 x 5 card pinned up on the wall behind my computer, where only I could see it, when I was in grad school. It said, very simply, "You can't fix everything." Meaning, I could keep beating my head against the injustices of this world, against the Wrong Things that I'd like to fix, until I was totally done in, but not everything would get fixed. Not everything is fixable.

But there are some people I can reach. (I count this young woman - the one I met with yesterday - as one in the Win column. I think I was one of the first profs she had when she came back to school after a long absence, and she's told me about how she was unsure and insecure and didn't know if she had the ability to get her degree. And I saw that she did have that ability, and I guess some of the things I did and said helped encourage her, helped build her confidence). I just wish I were better at focusing on the people who go in the Win column - the people I managed to help, the people that I encouraged, the people I offered research to, the people I pushed to apply to grad school. And not worrying too much about the people in the Not-Win column - the ones who cheat, the ones who seem to show no enthusiasm, the complainers, the ones who take their degree but then go on to do little with it.

I'm not sure how to do that, unfortunately. I really DO wish I could "fix everything" or "fix everyone." But I know I can't.

uh-oh

I think I scared the daylights out of one of my students today.

I had one guy walk into class maybe 5 minutes late. Because it's still early days, and I don't know everyone's name yet, I am taking roll. (I hope I can get to the point where I can do a quick scan and see who's not there).

Anyway, this guy comes walking (well, running, rather), in.

"Ralphie?!" I said (name changed to protect the innocent). I guess I said it kind of sharply - I was mid sentence when he walked in and it startled me - he immediately apologized, and explained he had a class all the way across campus (I understand, it's a long trek from there) right before this one.

I said it was OK and I moved on.

At the end of class he came up - kind of shaky like - and apologized to me again and explained again. I was all "Dude, dude, it's OK. I only said your name because I was taking roll and I was guessing that it was you. I'm not mad at you or anything."

It's always hard when you have latecomers - if there's more than one of each gender - if you don't know names. Either you have to ask them their name or guess, and I'm not sure which is more embarrassing to me. I wish I were one of those people who learned who people were the moment they were introduced to them, but I'm not, and no matter what I've tried, I can't change that.

I just hope I didn't scare "Ralphie" too badly today.