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[sickofit71]

The stories that I would love to tell.  Three incidents just this semester.  But, they would probably identify my school and I think that's a no-no.

Bummer.

Bummer, indeed.  Mine is one of my best student stories ever.  I will only say:

prospective student tour
nakedness
water
drugs
sticks
mud


Oh for multiple monikers....

Yet more Forum Teases.  Some people get us all excited for good stories (and who doesn't love a good story) and then refuse to share.  *SIGH*

Let's see if I can do this without totally outing myself or my former employer:

Imagine a fine, warm day in late summer.   

One of my students and a friend, sans clothing and on the ground near a body of water, were discovered one morning by a group of prospectives and parents on a tour who were brought along this particular route through campus because it was scenic, what with the water and nature and all. 

An irate parent of a prospective called the cops because there was a little too much nature on this part of the tour.  [Why on earth they were shocked to see party remnants on that particular campus still astounds me, but....]

The cops showed up and woke up the students who were unconscious in all of their naked glory on the shore in a lot of mud.  The students had no clothes, no id, and no clue how they had gotten there.  Whomever had left them, however, had created some crude Blair Witch Project symbols out of sticks and left them around them.  The cops, used to such shenanigans, arrested the students. 

However, they did not get them away from the area before the next tour came wandering past.  My student told me that they were told to "cover themselves" on the front using the mud in which they were sitting before they were handcuffed and made to sit there while the tour wandered past. 

Tour wanders by.  Student was mortified.  Apparently student's friend was still more than a little under the influence and greatly enjoyed both the attention and scaring the prospectives. 

The students then were told to get up and get into the police vehicle.  The friend got up and promptly passed out and fell over into the mud, splattering the cop that was helping the friend up and who could not get a good enough hold on the friend because the friend was muddy.   

Apparently, the duo had been mixing some recreational drugs in unwise combinations, or so their drug tests revealed. 

The one who was in my class, and who missed my class because sheit was still cooking under the late morning sun at the start of class and was in the clink by the end of it, had one nasty sunburn for a while.  Sheit told me that the pranksters who left them there and/or stole their clothes had used mud to create an outline of the school's name on sheit's back and that sheit (a white student) was a walking billboard for the school for a while.   

Anyhow, there are some other details missing, but largely, this is the funny part.  I did not believe the student for one minute, until sheit offered to show me the sunburn and started pulling up sheit's shirt in my office.  I told sheit that perhaps keeping clothes on needed to be a new habit and called the cops to inquire.  They confirmed it all. 

I still imagine that your imaginations came up with better stories!

THAT SOUNDS LIKE MY UNDERGRAD!  MIDWEST?

[gennimom]

Just one thing from both GD and I:


ROFLMAO!

[marianthe]

This may be the best student email EVER:

http://acephalous.typepad.com/acephalous/2007/03/and_yet_i_still.html

[dr_evil]

I still imagine that your imaginations came up with better stories!

I don't know.  That's a pretty good story.  I hurt from laughing so hard.  Thanks for sharing it with us!

[infopri]

Great story, iomhaigh!  Nothing like that ever happens on the campuses I've been at--not even the one on the shores of a very large body of water.  <sigh>

Thanks for sharing!

[sickofit71]

LOL my undergrad was clothing opitional during my first year.

My father, a religious Jew, was met at the door of my dormitory by a woman wearing no clothes.

Also, my first term there were two crazy kids making *love* under a tree...they seemed to be oblivious to the fact that they were being watched by about 400 co-eds during their frolic.....

I miss that place.

[lmf3b]

This is one of my "best." You can ascertain the overall quality of the sudent by my reply.

I just wanted to let you know that I have asked my little brother about the jumpdrive my paper is saved on back home..he has no idea where it is.  I had it at our computer desk and he asked me if he could use it for a social studies group project at his school and being the nice big {sibling} I am, not thinking that I will need it before next semester, I let him use it.  I have had my family turn our house upside down and it's nowhere to be found.  My little brother is thinking that he may have left it at one of the other student's house's.  Am I going to have to Redo it??  If that's my only option, I don't think that would be fair because I actually put ALOT of effort in that paper because the topic was something that I was very familiar to me because of some relationship problems that happened last year.  I did it on Narcissistic Disorder.  It was a little over 6 pages long and I honestly think that if I have to redo it, I won't be able to get it done on time.  I can't get the resources and everything on such short notice.  I put it in your mailbox.  I even said hello to the secretary when I stepped in the door to put it in there.  I put in in there on Monday the 20th at like 140ish pm because I was on my way to meet some students for lunch at 2pm.  I have to at least get a C in this class.  I have to bring my cumulative GPA up or else I can lose my scholorship and possibly be terminated from {militay program}.  Is there anyway, whatsoever, that I can get a C in this class.  I'll be turning in most of my missing labs tomorrow morning when I go to take my exam.  I will admit that I didn't come to every class, but that is because I have had some family issues and I either had to go home or I was just too upset to come to class.  My grandfather was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer at the end of September and he was given 9 months to live at the minimum.  He passed away on the morning of the November 7th.  That really hit me hard.  I really need a C in this class.  If you can't find my paper, there is no way I will be able to redo that on time.  It took me weeks to complete it.  What should I do about this?  Is there any chance at all that I can get a C in this class??  I'm practically begging and pleading here.  I will even be your TA next semester and grade papers...coffee runs...anything. =)  lol  Well, I am leaving to go home at 1pm today.  I will try to get on my email daily to figure this out.  I will talk to you before, but I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!  Take care and stay safe!  Thank you for your time.

I am sorry, but there is no way to justify a passing grade in {class}, even if I were to allow you to resubmit your paper.  You have made D's or F's on every test and have a 36 average on quizzes.  I have not yet graded the 9 late lab reports you submitted the last week, but even if they are flawless they will incur an substantial late penalty.  Most importantly, given that you did not answer two out of three essay questions and made only a brief attempt at the third, you earned only 18 out of 100 points for the final exam. That kind of work cannot possibly earn a passing grade in a course, much less pull a D average up to a C.
 
In the future, if family situations make it impossible for you to complete your coursework, the appropriate thing to do is to request a withdrawal or incomplete for medical or personal reasons. Missing coursework and poor grades cannot be compensated for by serving as a TA.

I cc'ed the advisor and head of the military program to let them know one of their ever-so-honorable cadets was offering to fetch coffee for grades. Thankfully, I have never heard from the student again.

What I wanted to add:

The only part of your story I do not find difficult to believe is your familiarity with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

[case_insensitive]

This is precious.

Dr. Insensitive

  I was wandering if there is anything I can do to get my
grade up in your class. This last test I thought I did good
when I left, but my grade shows I didn't do good. I studied
and gone to class (exceptions of a few days from being sick
with broncidus) but I was wandering what else I can do? I am
unable to make it to the meetings because of another class I
have. If you could let me know anything I may be able to do,
I'd appreciate it.

Lauren

Reply:

Lauren,

Your grade is calculated as shown on your syllabus.  To increase your grade you need to do better on the remaining exams. To do well on the exams you need to be in class and you need to be doing every bit of homework and additional practice problems to prepare for the exam.  In my experience, this is really the only approach that works for 99.9% of students.

Are you doing all the homework and then doing practice problems, such as the B problem sets, to prepare for exams?

Dr. I.

Ya think?

Perhaps her choice to sit on the back row with the cute guy from South Africa and chat with him rather than paying attention in class might be a relevant piece of data?

[azonda]

Just in this week...

Hi, this is Jon Smith. Im in your M/W/F 9am class, I havent been attending class the last 3 or so weeks, and know its past the time to drop your class. I stoped attending your class mainly because I didnt think I could learn the matireal fast enough. Also I plan on teaching high school in [Southern State], and theres not many [language] speaking students in [Southern State]. The problem is that I need to pass this class at least with a D, so that next semester I can be the Vice President for the Pikes, Pie Kappa Alpha. Is there anyway if I attend every class left this semester, and pass all quizes and tests could my grade be high enough to pass. Please let me know something. Ill be in class tomarrow, so ill talk to you then if I havent heard from you by then. Thanks Jon

"Tomarrow" came and went without an appearance. Could he pass the class? Possible, but not probable.

[dr_evil]

Case,
Translating from the Student Dictionary, her comment about "wandering if there is anything I can do" is really saying "can't you give me extra credit I don't deserve to bring up my grade?"  But I'm sure you knew that.

[grasshopper]

"[Blah blah blah]... Right now I feel as though you are not giving me a chance because I didn't show up that often to that many classes. [Has attended three classes all term].
 
[More blah blah blah]... Because I wasn't in class shouldn't be a big deal for a teacher. The point of being a teacher is to ensure that people who actually want to learn have a chance to. I have been to more than three classes because i have more than three days worth of notes. You are just counting assignments , you never took attendance so you do not possibly know how many classes I have been to all you know is that I handed in three weekly assignments [actually only handed in two], two of which i have in my posession and one you should have in yours. Also I have no idea how the midterm went [Hasn't been to class since the midterm, over a month ago]."



My favourite part is the bit about how not attending class shouldn't be a big deal. One of the things I love about being an educator is being told that my classes are worthless. I dig it the most.

This student wants me to allow her to make up an entire semester's worth of work. The bulk of the work for this course was done in-class, and since there is only a week and a half of classes left (none of which, she's informed me, she plans to attend), what I'm essentially being asked to do is prepare an entirely new course in the next three weeks, and teach it to her for free while accomodating her schedule. Somehow, I just don't see that happening. 

What makes this particularly galling is that I ran around campus yesterday, in order to find out which administrative hoops need to be jumped through so that this student has the option of withdrawing from the course without academic penalty.

What was that Larry said about not spending more time on a student than the student spends on the class?

[top_biochemist_agree]

What makes this particularly galling is that I ran around campus yesterday, in order to find out which administrative hoops need to be jumped through so that this student has the option of withdrawing from the course without academic penalty.

I thought that responsibility would fall on the student?

[voxprincipalis]

Wow, grasspy, you've got another real winner there. Do we have a kind of Darwin Awards for entitled students?

VP

[grasshopper]

What makes this particularly galling is that I ran around campus yesterday, in order to find out which administrative hoops need to be jumped through so that this student has the option of withdrawing from the course without academic penalty.

I thought that responsibility would fall on the student?

It would, and it should. I just want her out of my hair.

She's not interested in withdrawing, though. Despite her mountain of personal problems, all of which I've had described to me in gory detail, she's determined that I will give her at least a C. She's told me that she'll be happy with that.

Well, whatever I can do to make her happy...

[cc_alan]

What makes this particularly galling is that I ran around campus yesterday, in order to find out which administrative hoops need to be jumped through so that this student has the option of withdrawing from the course without academic penalty.

I thought that responsibility would fall on the student?

It would, and it should. I just want her out of my hair.

She's not interested in withdrawing, though. Despite her mountain of personal problems, all of which I've had described to me in gory detail, she's determined that I will give her at least a C. She's told me that she'll be happy with that.

Well, whatever I can do to make her happy...

I had a student who had terrible attendance and was doing very poorly in class. The Sunday before finals week he calls late that night and leaves a rambling voicemail about all the problems he was having and if "I didn't pass him" it would affect his financial aid, etc.

I was a minty-fresh instructor at the time and I just sat there listening to the voicemail thinking "what the F?" until he stated what he would accept for a grade (a B was preferred but a C was acceptable... too bad he wasn't even doing D work). That's when I deleted the message and slammed the phone down.

I later found out from other instructors that I wasn't the first to this treatment from the student.

Alan