Dear students,

I know that I have yet to describe the last day of my Foodie Adventures with Rachel, however, another point has come across about which I feel compelled to blog.

My day:

There is a student in one of my classes who does not have the mental capacity to endure learning and teaching at a pace that is slightly faster than normal- or so he said when he let us all know in class today. He made it quite clear to the professor and to everyone in the room that he was not learning anything and that teaching him is like “talking to a wall”. My professor, who if I might add is an exceptional professor at this university due to her enthusiasm for the subject as well as enthusiasm to help people understand, encouraged this student and showered him with positivity. He refuted these motivations and proceeded, in a very distracting manner, to talk to people about how much he didn’t understand and how frustrated he was because he couldn’t understand.

Ok, so I get where he’s coming from because I, too, like any normal human being, get frustrated when things don’t go my way and if I don’t understand something. For example, today I realized that my grades, although “average”, are just that. Average. I don’t like that. I don’t want to be average and I know I’m not an average student. I’m just lazy. I know that I shouldn’t be lazy, and although I’m sitting and blogging about how I should study instead of studying, I know that I need to change my work ethic as I do every semester.

What I don’t get is when people just give up and then start dragging people down with them. I also don’t get when students argue with a professor who is trying to encourage them to do better. If anything, special treatment from professor is a sign that the professor wants the student to do well. The professor does not want you to fail. How would that make the professor feel if her entire class failed a test that she thought wasn’t difficult?

Which brings me to the next part of my day. Around 6:50 p.m. I debated going to class or not. I figured we’d start a new chapter today, seeing as we weren’t going to go over our midterm exam in class, so I went. Bad choice. Instead of doing Spanish homework or something productive like scrolling through Facebook photos, I spent an hour listening to students argue about getting bad grades on their exams. Mind you, I didn’t do so well either; however, arguing to a professor and even almost blaming him for receiving a bad note is beyond me.

The professor explained to us how he reviewed the test the first time and there were 14 F’s. That’s more than half the class. Because of this odd occurrence, he decided to be “nicer” and reviewed the tests again, changing the F’s into D’s. It makes me wonder what the second-round F’s were before he reviewed them again.

I understand that people are frustrated because a D or F would make me flip-a-poo as well, but I wouldn’t blame the professor for a mistake that I made. The arguments that these students set up could be easily refuted… by a fellow student. Plus, one student even got an A, which means it wasn’t impossible. Another student thought it was logical to argue that the student who received the A was here last semester, an argument which many permanent students (including myself) fired back with “I’ve been here for 3 years, and I don’t have an A.”

Another student claimed that s/he took both tests (because there was the exam, then a make up exam for people who weren’t able to take it the first time- which in my opinion, the professor had the right to make it more difficult because 1) It’s a second chance, which I’m sure at a university back in the States, a professor wouldn’t give you and 2) If you missed it the first time, you get extra time to study for the second time), so s/he took both tests and said s/he did poorly on both of them. Then, s/he had the audacity to lobby for something that could up his/her grade and made it seem like getting a bad grade on both tests was not his/her fault, but the professor’s because he told us that the test was going to be “easier” than it actually was. Yes, he did tell us that there were going to be 6 cases and not 3. But what does that matter. What if he gave us 6 cases on 6 of the terminology we couldn’t define on the first part? Would we have complained then? Either way, the argument that we weren’t prepared to do ONLY 3 cases, and that we were ready to do 6 wasn’t legitimate.

As for lobbying for extra credit or a make up test. Ok, I can agree with extra credit. That’s a good call. However, a make up test or completely disregarding the first midterm is a bit much. You can only negotiate so much. Firstly, don’t take advantage of the fact that we can negotiate with grades here. It’s rude. Yes, it’s a bit of the professor’s fault because he told us the test wasn’t going to be that bad. But it’s also our fault for not studying as much as we should have. Yes, there are students who studied and got a bad grade. But those students know who they are and can probably go talk to the professor, who would be more than happy to sit down and have a level-headed conversation than be attacked in front of an entire class. Secondly, the professor also gave us the opportunity to raise our grades with an optional quiz on Monday. Then, people started asking specific questions about a test that the professor had just decided on making. His guess was as good as ours as to what’s going to be on that test. Honestly, think about it kids, when he says, “Ok, so… how about this… how about we have an optional test on Monday. I haven’t made it yet”… students: “So how many questions is it? What’s going to be on it? What do we have to study?” Him saying, “I don’t know yet” isn’t because he wants to spite us, it’s because he really doesn’t know.

To top it off is the end of class. By this time, I just wanted to go home because people were just being stupid. It makes me really frustrated, too, that at the end people started to laugh at the professor’s accent. He says, “Focus” like “Fuck yous”. I’ve had a professor like that, yes it was funny the first time, but come on, be mature and get over it. Honestly, after an entire class at basically insulting the man’s teaching, the last thing he needs is a room full of his failing students laughing at him for a reason he doesn’t even notice.

And just to cover my bases here, and I said it before, I did not do well on this exam. I’m not saying that it’s fair that the professor said it was going to be easy and then it turned out that it wasn’t. But it’s our responsibility to study for a test like it’s going to be difficult. Just because he says it’s easy, it doesn’t mean it will be. He’s the professor, he can do whatever he wants in his class. And I’m not saying that arguing with a professor isn’t legitimate, because sometimes, sometimes it is. I’m saying that it’s disrespectful to argue with a professor in front of a classroom of students. It’s disrespectful to blame a professor for your mistakes when you know you’re in the wrong, but you just want to get a better grade.

I feel like a better grade because of this experience, because he went back to look at our tests and he’s going to go back again to maybe give us an extra point for writing our name would make me feel a bit dumber. My grade reflects how much effort I decided to put into studying. It’s not the professor’s responsibility. He’s already been through this stage. The blame’s on me and it’s me who has to change the way I think, the way I study, the way take tests in order for me to do better.

And lastly, don’t be stupid, kids. Professors are people too. Professors have feelings and lives just like everyone else. When they show their faces to us everyday, they have to look positive even when they’re having the worst day of their lives, even when we’re not even looking at them, not paying attention, doodling, or sleeping. They have to put up with us making excuses about why we don’t have the homework, lying about the internet not working, lying about there being a paper jam. We’re doing poorly because we’re doing poorly. Seriously. Think about it.

March 4, 2010. Uncategorized.