CollegeDiaries

Day 31

This is NOT what I became an educator for…

Stupid kids! How dare they claim that “Statistics has no purpose in life”. I was so outraged when one of them said it (I really should have taken a note on who it was), I couldn’t give them a proper or, for that matter, any example.

It’s because I was mad. I will give them a good answer tomorrow. Although it’s 2.30 am and I still don’t have one. Shit!

Day 29

I woke up with several questions on my mind today:

  • Did I make a mistake in assigning that report to Emily?
  • Will she have trouble presenting in from of her classmates?
  • Will her classmates disrespect her and skip class today?
  • Should I feel sorry for not getting Dickhead out of jail?

The answer to all of these question – absolutely not!

Emily gave a great report and there were 17 students attending class who hear it. By the end most of them were really frustrated, because they realised they had turned down their A’s. Some of them actually asked me questions at the end of the lecture, which I promised to answer… tomorrow, i.e. I guaranteed attendance for Tuesday as well. I wonder how long I can keep them coming to class in this ‘Arabian nights’ style.

Ah, who cares, it’s working for now…

Day 28

I actually didn’t plan on posting today, but this is something which I had to share – karma at it’s best.

Turns out Rich couldn’t believe I was standing him up on Friday, and he thought it was much more likely that I’m in some sort of trouble, so he decided it was good idea to break down the front door of my apartment. Problem is that he’s a puny little man-child, with the physical strength of a wounded butterfly and the fighting technique of a fish on dry land.

In short, he spent about 15 minutes hitting his shoulder on my door before one of my neighbours – good old Mrs. Davies, called the police and they arrested him. Only today did he manage to reach me on my phone, and ask me to explain to the police that this was a mistake and that I know him.

Naturally, after he told me what had happened and passed the phone over to the policeman, I told the officer that “I have no idea who that is, he probably gave you a random number. Please make sure he doesn’t call me on this phone again, I have the feeling that he might try to. Thanks. Goodbye.”

So, Dickhead is currently in jail, charged with… losing a fight to a door, I suppose.

Day 26

Since I’m not allowed at the teacher’s meetings, I decided I should use my long weekend and go to my parents’ place. I thought they would be surprised to see me so soon after my last visit, but they actually sounded very joyful when I called to tell them that I’m coming. To be honest, the phone call with my mother was a bit weird – she kept giggling all the time. Anyway, I need to get out of town to clear my head, get the last few weeks out of my mind and really think about how I’m going to handle thing at work. On a similar note, my personal life also seems to need some reevaluating.

Oh, and speaking of phone calls I had today, Rich called me and said he wants to meet up so that we can talk about what had happened. I agreed and told him to come pick me up from home. Right after he hung up, I got on the bus and left town. At the moment he’s probably ringing my doorbell like a stubborn Jehovah’s witness who has just seen the lights of a house go out.

Day 25

Facebook definitely beats Twitter in terms of getting through to young people. A whopping number of 15 students showed up, all asking solely about their grades and with zero interest towards the learning material.

They were all left with the impression that I was going to discuss their results privately with everyone, but since everyone had the same result I decided shouldn’t waste my time… nor theirs.

I gathered them all in the classroom and wrote few things on the board:
Mean result: A+
Standard error: 0.0
Standard deviation: 0.0

I told them that “These are the statistics for the quiz you took the other day. Anyone who has passed it should be able to figure out what their result is. Since this was your first quiz on the subject I will allow everyone to decide now if they want to keep their grade, or not, but I will need you to do it in the next 30 seconds, by raising your hands. If you don’t raise your hand by then OR you start talking to the people around you, I will consider that you don’t want your grade to be official… or that you have no bloody idea what it is, in which case, I would only presume you haven’t done all that well on the quiz. Time starts now.

By the end of the 30 seconds there were just four students with their hands lifted up in the air – a boy, who was one of the three that sat through my whole lecture on Tuesday,  Emily and, not surprisingly – the two sitting next to her. She obviously had managed to inform them that the writings on the board mean that every single person has an A+.

Well, if she wants to do my job, I’d better let her, I thought.

“Emily”, I said, “since you’re one of the few here who actually understand what’s going on, I’d like you to give a report on Monday. The topic for the report will be ‘Examination of poor choices or Why would 11 out of 15 students refuse to get an A+’. If you’re having trouble, finding examples… just look all around you. Class dismissed.”

Day 24

I was right – zero attendance today.

Actually – who cares, even if someone shows up, they’ll probably spend most of their time checking their phones and commenting on the TOP 10 BEST CAT VIDEOS OF ALL TIME!

I’m better off spending the whole class grading papers.

I believe I one-upped the kids… it took them 12 minutes to complete the quiz, but I managed to grade all 22 papers in just under 10. The fact that they were completely identical (give or take some punctuation and/or spelling) did help.

22 papers – all graded A+. On the one hand – hurrah, I have the best students ever. On the other – one inspection from the department of education and I’m out.

I decided I need to share my concerns with the students, so I posted  this

FB1

in their facebook group.

 

 

 

Day 23

After yesterday’s fiasco I didn’t really feel like I could do anything

By the time Richard and Kathryn got upI had already posted day 22 and was just sitting in my bedroom, staring at the wall. I’m not sure if they even noticed me or if they said goodbye before leaving. Either way, I don’t really care.

I didn’t have the will do anything productive and I certainly didn’t feel like making a new test for those ungrateful pricks I’m supposed to be teaching, so today I just gave them the exact questions I gave to the last three students on Thursday.

I was pretty sure that by now everybody had them, as well as their answers, taken right out of the textbook. I figured they would all probably be done in 30 minutes and I could use the rest of the class to talk to them and finally have a proper lecture – the way I expected it was going to be in the beginning. Plus, I figured everyone would get a high result, which would help me in my plan to get my students’ grades up.

Boy, did I underestimate them – the first student to finish (not surprisingly it was Emely) was done in under 7 minutes. The last one to give me his sheet and exit the room right after, did it in 12.

Astounding! I remember when I was a student and we had answers to a quiz, at least we pretended we were making an effort.

By the way, I forgot to tell them that I won’t be giving a lecture tomorrow in order to check their quizes, but I have the feeling that the already knew they weren’t coming to class.

Day 22

Today was the day I broke my record for sweating. After realizing that it wasn’t Sunday I had less than an hour to get to the university and give the test. I got dressed in my least dirty clothes (Sunday is usually my laundry day, so I had no clean ones), saw my car keys on the floor, grabbed them and stormed out. Thank God for car alarms, because I couldn’t see or remember where I had parked.

I thought that while driving to the campus I would have time to come up with a reasonable plan on how to proceed with the test. However instead of the usual 30-35 minutes it took me just under 10 to get to the university. “How did I get here so fast” I started to wonder? Stuart, the campus parking attendant, helped me reach to the conclusion when he said:

“Nice car, professor Vines. You really should have called you’ll be with your own vehicle today. Lucky for you professor Stevens is on leave today, so you can use his parking spot. It’s 38C…”

I didn’t really hear what he said after that, because my inner voice was too busy yelling at me:

“You came here faster, because you usually use the bus. You don’t have a car, you idiot! This vehicle belongs to someone else! Whose keys were at your place? Why would they leave them… and muuuuuch more importantly – are they still there?

Now I really had to think fast – I had to go back home immediately, but I also had to give a test in 15 minutes. A couple of my colleagues saw me at the parking lot , so calling in sick wasn’t an option. I ran to the classroom, put a note saying that class is cancelled today on the door and got back to the car. It took me just 7 minutes to drive back home (whoever this car belongs to – nice!)

In my living room I found… Richard and Kathryn sleeping on my extending sofa, each wearing  a party hat and… nothing else.