The thorn in my semester November 26, 2013
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, teaching.Tags: failure, grades, students, teaching
1 comment so far
There are two things I hate about being a teacher. The first is dealing with angry, threatening students. Fortunately, I don’t run into those too often, but they are seriously unfun. The second is dealing with students who don’t show up (sometimes physically, sometimes mentally) but still want to pass the class. This problem is more common than the first, though, so I’ve had to learn to get used to it.
The very first semester I was teaching, as an undergrad, I had a student who missed a couple labs. This student in particular annoyed me because it was someone I knew through other activities. When I introduced myself to the class, he said to his neighbor, quite audibly, “She’s the teacher?! This class is going to be SO easy.” The department policy was that anyone who missed more than a certain number of labs would fail, but I tried to be nice and let him make it up. When I set up a time for the first make-up lab, he showed up drunk and could barely function. I complained to the chair, and he got upset with me.
“Why are you letting him make up the labs? This is exactly why we have this policy in place. Fail him.”
I was surprised how easy a decision it was for the chair. Appalled, actually. But the student had been a pain all semester, so I rationalized that I didn’t owe him anything.
I got a call from him over Christmas break: it was my fault that he wasn’t graduating.
I don’t take lightly to guilt trips, so any residual guilt I had about failing him disappeared in that moment. The maneuver backfired, and I told him to take it up with the chair.
I’ve always wondered if his comment about the class being easy was an indicator that he thought he wouldn’t have to put in any effort. I also realized that he was right: if the chair hadn’t told me to fail him, he likely would have gotten through the class easily. That one was my fault: he accurately predicted that I was going to be much nicer than I had to be, and he was going to take advantage of that. I try very hard not to do that any more.
I really hate every time I have to go through this with a student. It’s not that I put a lot of faith in grades, but I would really rather that the students put in enough effort that I can at least justify passing them, even if just barely. It’s much easier on all of us.
Try, try, try again…then accept failure August 12, 2010
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, physics.Tags: astronomy, failure
4 comments
I have always thought that people could do whatever they were determined to do. I used to buy into the notion that Edison was right: “Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.”
I think there is a lot of truth to that, but at some point I realized that, to get to that point, there has to be some inherent ability there.
When I was in undergrad, there was another student who was in the Navy for many years. After getting out, he decided he really, really, really wanted to go into astronomy. I have never seen someone work so hard…and ultimately fail.
The poor guy couldn’t make it past the first semester of calculus. By his third attempt, he enlisted the help of the other physics students. We would hang out in the student lounge and were always glad to help him when he requested it. But it was a horrible thing to watch: he knew in general what he had to do, but could never fill in the logical steps that would take him from A to B. You had to spell out each and every one for him.
I honestly thought that the guy would make it through on sheer will-power, but after several attempts at helping him, I realized he just couldn’t do anything requiring more than a couple basic steps. The devil really was in the details for him.
I’ve seen other people decide to quit physics and engineering because they felt it wasn’t worth the work or because they had other priorities (short and long term). You accept that maybe that’s not their path and life and move on. It was truly awful to watch someone who so desperately wanted to and was willing to work so hard be forced to leave the program. No one forced him out; his repetitious failure of calc brought his GPA to the point where he couldn’t receive any more financial aid.
What made things worse is that he was so devoted. He was an extremely active member in our Society of Physics Students chapter. He was always doing things around the department, and he really kept trying to get involved in research.
I know a couple people who snickered at our ill-fated hero because of their obviously superior intellect. I didn’t feel that way at all. I felt very lucky to have an ability that not everyone has and that I should not take it for granted. He made me really appreciate what I had. If there were some way to share the ability that I had and he needed, I would have done so.
I think about this student a lot. And I wonder what I’ll do if I ever run into someone like that as a teacher. I honestly don’t know. I would hate for a student to continually strive for something when no matter how hard they work at it, they’ll never be able to accomplish it. On the other hand, I would never want to tell someone to quit, especially if they are pursuing their dream.
I am not sure what happened to that student because he cut ties with everyone once he left. I just hope that he found something he enjoys doing. I imagine that, whatever he’s doing, he probably built himself a telescope and spends his evenings gazing at the stars.
I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.