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JerseySmarts.com

My Teaching Schedule Gets Completely Rearranged at the Last Minute

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Many of you know that for the last four years I’ve taught a variety of introduction to political science courses, part-time, at the local university. In fact, I was actually fortunate enough to create my own course and teach it for the first time last spring and the word that I’ve heard is that it went over really well with the end-of-the-semester student reviews. That’s good news because it helps elevate me in the lineup of potential instructors for political science courses.

This fall (and for the first time since I’ve been teaching) I was scheduled to teach Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights for about an hour and fifteen minutes each night. Typically, I teach only Monday and Wednesday or Tuesday and Thursday so this arrangement was new for me and definitely more of a challenge. However, at the last minute (late last week) my classes were rearranged and it turns out that instead of teaching each night of the week I’ll probably only wind up teaching on Tuesday and Friday mornings. This, of course, is a big change for me.

In order for me to be even able to teach the morning class I had to get approval from my job (which both my direct supervisor and the President of the company approved enthusiastically – they love that I teach). So once that was taken care of, I had to think about my schedule for the coming semester and I think that this could work out very well. You see, to date the university has only canceled my Monday / Wednesday class which means that there’s still a chance that I’ll be teaching on Tuesday / Thursday nights. I’m fine with that since the Tuesday / Thursday night class starts at 6:00pm and I’ll be home by 7:45pm each night (if not slightly earlier). That’s fine with me! Plus, I was thinking that what I might do is schedule myself to have meetings with clients for my day job on Tuesdays in the late morning and early afternoon. That way I can avoid traveling from West Long Branch to Trenton and then back to West Long Branch at night, you know? At least if I have meetings during the day, I can schedule them within a reasonable distance of Monmouth County and not drive myself crazy driving all over God’s Creation.

Anyway, that’s what the face-to-face teaching schedule is looking like for the coming semester. In addition to that, I might be teaching another few sections of online courses for the state’s online college. One way or another, I’ll certainly be pretty busy in the coming months…

Unnecessary Complications: Dealing with the Pampered Generation

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Finals are over and some of my students are getting ready to walk across the stage during graduation this week. It’s pretty cool to say that I’ve now taught college graduates. However, with the end of the semester comes a bit of a pain in the ass. You see, I’m one of these professors that puts out a syllabus and then (gasp) sticks to it. In other words, when the syllabus says, “Cell phones use is not permitted in the classroom,” that means (get ready for it) that you can’t use your cell phone during class. Shocking, right? When I write that not participating in class discussions can negatively impact your class grade by dropping it more than a full letter grade, guess what that means?

That’s right! It means that if you opt to have a blank stare on your face during the entire semester then you get pretty close to 0 of the 25 points allocated for participation!

Let’s face it – many of today’s college students were whisked through high school and really not properly prepared for the rigor of college-level study. To make matters worse, these students were typically pampered all of their lives by hyper-protective parents, teachers that opted to teach plain vanilla course content as opposed to creating an engaging classroom, and an overall failing educational system that doesn’t mind giving students a higher grade for their “effort.”

That crap doesn’t fly in the real world. If you miss a deadline for your company or submit work that is riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, you get fired. Period.

You might say that if it is the job of the secondary education system to prepare students for the rigor of college study, then it is the job of the college system to prepare students for the rigor of higher level occupations. That’s my job as an adjunct professor. In fact, I believe that my job as an adjunct professor is to bring outside experience into the classroom and show my students what happens in the real world through the scope of the course that I’m teaching. It’s a tricky game, but I enjoy doing this type of work because I see the quality of students coming out of most colleges and they’re just not prepared to be engaged employees. It’s a damn shame, really.

To some degree, I think that for most students I unwillingly represent the exact opposite of what they’re used to from their high school teachers. I stress “unwillingly” because I don’t think that I’m doing anything outlandish or crazy in my grading. I think that when a student does not engage herself in class discussion because she is clacking away on her BlackBerry device for the majority of the semester in a class that places 25% of the final grade on participation, then the best that student can hope for is a 75 in the class. Okay, maybe if she engages in a few discussions throughout the semester, she can find herself with a 78 or 79.

Too often, the pampered generation of students expects that if they receive a B average on their written submissions and have spotty attendance and no participation, then they’ll just get the B average. I’m not sure on what planet that would make sense, but it doesn’t work in my classroom. I create a grading matrix in an Excel spreadsheet and detail for each student how they can receive an A in the course. In fact, I give them a copy of the spreadsheet so they can track their grades throughout the semester. I also suggest to the students when/if they need to be more engaged in class discussions so they can get some participation points. There’s not much more that I can do to help these students other than resemble some of their pampering high school teachers and I’m not interested in that at all.

Thus far, about 15% of my students have questioned their final grade and I’ve suggested that they lacked on the participation requirement. None of the questioning students have responded to my replies on their participation, but I expect that in a generation that has rarely been told, “no,” or “bad job,” that a few of them will lash out at my responses. Unfortunately for them, I don’t have to worry about getting tenure or receiving any type of accolades from my students since I’m given teaching assignments when/if the college needs help.

If you’re a college student out there contemplating complaining about your final grade, I would suggest that you get out your syllabus and look at how your grade is calculated. If participation is 15% of your final grade, then ask yourself if you participated in each class session. If not, then do you think that you deserve those 15 points? If you answer, “yes,” to that question, then you’re probably the result of a pampering system that doesn’t teach you in the context of the real world. If you answered, “no,” to that question, they you probably wouldn’t complain about your final grade anyway.

Quick Update: Classmate Still a Bumbling Moron

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Just wanted to post a quick update to yesterday’s entry regarding the moron idiot girl in the class that I’m taking. In yesterday’s entry I included the following blurb:

As you’re hanging out doing what you do tonight, know that at around 7:00pm EST tonight I’ll be ready to punch the wall in the classroom where I’m listening to an idiot prattle on in a program that she doesn’t want to be in and performing at a level that is unacceptable for even undergraduate work.

Well, I was right on target with that one. This girl was completely ridiculous last night. She may have said the word “like” two thousand times during the course of a 15 minute public conversation with the Professor. As I was trying to hold back my vomit, I refused to count the amount of times that she said “and stuff like that” and “you know.” I was, however, glad to see that the two women that sit in front of me in class were mocking this idiot, albeit amongst themselves. At least I’m not the only one who thinks that this dunce shouldn’t be in graduate school.

I honestly get so riled up over the fact that this idiot can’t speak in a communications program that I’ve thought about going to the Dean of the Graduate School to voice my concerns. She really is that unacceptable of a student – I’ve never seen a person who is less qualified to be pursuing an advanced degree except for maybe the girl who cried hateful, angry tears (see yesterday’s entry).

Oh, and the dummy girl is joined in her stupidity by an older guy who can’t read his environment worth a shit. More on this bozo in a future entry…

Unnecessary Complications: People Who Should Not Be Pursuing an Advanced Degree

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Later on tonight I’ll be giving a presentation in this class that I’m taking for free at the local college where I teach. And while it’s a bit of a pain in the ass to be saddled with a measly five minute presentation when I already have my advanced degree, such is the way of graduate school and I accept that part of the deal. Hey, it’s a free class and it puts me closer to a free graduate certificate so fine, whatever, I’ll do the presentation.

And tonight, giving the presentation won’t even annoy me. In fact, I like giving presentations because once I start presenting an issue I turn into one of these people that like to hear themselves talk. That’s the perfect quality for a presenter to have and I have that quality! What I will be annoyed at tonight, though, is this one moron girl who is enrolled in the same class as me. This girl (and I say “girl” because she is in no way mature enough to be termed a “woman”) is completely unprepared for graduate school work. I’ve been sitting on this entry for a while, but now I intend to share with you why this girl drives me absolutely crazy (and not in a hot, sexy way, either).

First, let me set the scene. As of Fall 2009, I enrolled in a graduate program at the local college where I teach. However, I first enrolled in this program way back in Fall 2003. I left the program after a single semester for a variety of reasons – one of which was that some of my classmates were incredibly unprepared for graduate level work and the thought of sharing the same degree with them made me sick.

Case in point: There was a girl in one of my classes back in Fall 2003 who was a complete freak show. I’m not sure what her disability was, but she cried at the drop of a dime. If you looked at her, she cried. If she raised her hand to answer a question and you called on her, she cried. If she raised her hand and someone else was called to answer the question, she cried. And it wasn’t a gentle weeping. No. This was an angry, frustrated, hateful type of crying – like she was hungry for your soul or some shit.

It was fucking scary.

One time I was assigned to the same group as this weirdo and I’m pretty much the nicest guy on the planet when it comes to working in groups (even though I, like every other graduate or undergraduate student, hate working in groups). The group had to divide up specific parts of the project to complete the work. Fine. Easy enough. Everyone knew that the crier was going to be a problem so we asked her what she wanted to do first. The tears started welling up and a look of incredulous rage came over this girl’s face. One of the women in the group became extra nice and sincere and helpful and told her that it was okay and that she could do whatever she wanted for the group if she just told us. Well… You would have thought that this other girl told the crier that she was a filthy cunt because the look on the crier’s face was the look you’d see on the face of a woman who just had her cat fall into a shredder. Her rage was palpable.

And that was her attitude in every class. She would have been better off enrolled in Michael Meyer’s School of Mass Murder.

Needless to say, I saw that a person like this was accepted into the graduate program and I told myself that I didn’t want to be associated with freaks like that in the job market. Thus, I went to Rutgers, earned my Masters Degree, and moved on.

But now I’m in this program again (because it’s free). I’m taking one class each semester and believe it or not, my class this semester takes place in the same room where I had class with the crier. Go figure.

I’ve surveyed my current classmates and they seem to be of a much higher quality than the group from back in Fall 2003, which is good to see. However, there is an idiot moron girl in this class who makes my fucking skin curl every time she speaks. Why, you ask? Imagine you’re in a graduate level class and you have an idiot who prefaces almost every comment with the word “like.” That’s what this girl does. Further, imagine that each sentence is trailed with either “you know” or “and stuff like that.” That’s what this idiot does. A typical sentence may sound like this:

“Like, what type of theory of communication should we research and stuff like that?”

What the fuck does that even mean?! And better yet – how is this asshole in a graduate program for communication!? Wait! I have the answer to that question because this bimbo told us why she’s there!

During the first class icebreaker/introductions (another waste of time), this dummy said that she’s in the class because her parents selected the program for her and are paying for her to go to graduate school. She went on to say that she didn’t want to go to graduate school, but her parents told her that they were going to pay for her to get an advanced degree to help her out in the job market, and stuff like that. The poor professor was baffled and didn’t know what to say; as a fellow professor sitting in the back of the room, I was shocked at what this girl was revealing to the class.

Frankly, everyone must have been surprised. One of her classmates asked her why she enrolled in a Masters Degree program when she didn’t want to do it, but the professor cut off Idiot Girl before she could respond. Folks, I gotta tell ya – this is the type of person that I would never, EVER hire! And if I was in charge of admissions at the local college, I would have never allowed this woman to get her dummy self in the door to begin with. This girl will be a black mark on the program that she’s in for years to come – mark my words.

It gets worse. So I have to give this presentation tonight. The assigned length of the presentation is 5 minutes. Fine – who can’t do a 5 minute presentation, right? THIS GIRL CAN’T DO A FIVE MINUTE PRESENTATION! In fact, when she gave her presentation a few weeks ago it lasted almost half an hour. As a professor, I appreciate when students go above and beyond, but this girl should have failed the assignment on time management alone. But wait…it still gets worse. Not only did this derelict go on for an additional 23 minutes beyond the time limit, she copied and pasted her entire research paper into the PowerPoint and those 23 minutes consisted of her reading the presentation word for word!

After the first 30 seconds of this bullshit my mind was blaring with: Unacceptable! Unacceptable! Failure! Failure!

If I was the professor of this class, I would have cut the student off at the ten minute mark and failed her immediately. And if she wanted more time, I would have publicly embarrassed her by saying that we can all read and we don’t need her to read her paper to us since it’s up on the PowerPoint screen (albeit it in fine print because she had WAY too much text on each slide).

Sooooo…

As you’re hanging out doing what you do tonight, know that at around 7:00pm EST tonight I’ll be ready to punch the wall in the classroom where I’m listening to an idiot prattle on in a program that she doesn’t want to be in and performing at a level that is unacceptable for even undergraduate work.

100 Hilarious College Courses That Really Exist

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The good folks over at OnlineUniversities.com sent me a link to a page on their site that chronicles hilarious college courses that actually exist. I took a look through some of these courses and it makes you scratch your head. Take a look below at some of the philosophy courses that are on the list…seriously.

44. The Simpsons and Philosophy: While the Simpsons may appear to be just good entertainment, this course shows the deeper philosophical issues under all those “d’ohs.” [UC Berkeley]

45. Philosophy and Star Trek: Students who take this class will not only get to watch Star Trek, but delve into the issues the show discusses like time travel, a sense of reality, free will and more. [Georgetown]

46. Star Trek and Religion: Look at religion through the lens of the Star Trek world, with discussions that address both supporting and criticizing religion. [U of Indiana]

47. Myth and Science Fiction: Star Wars, The Matrix, and Lord of the Rings: Explore larger issues of myth and speculative fiction through these popular movies. [Centre College]

48. Taking Marx Seriously: The oddest thing about this course’s name is that it implies that people haven’t been taking Marx seriously, odd considering the antipathy towards the economist and social theorist since the Cold War. [Amherst]

I was a philosophy minor in college so I absolutely appreciate creating these courses to serve a diverse student population. But Philosophy of the Simpsons? What can one learn in that course?! And isn’t any “Philosophy of [Insert TV Show Name Here]” really just a study of the perspectives on life of the show’s writers? I mean, it’s not like there is an actual Homer Simpson where we can study his life and times.

Anyway, head over to their site to take a look at the entire list. It’s pretty entertaining!