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[mad_doctor]

This reminds me of the news we get a few times a week these days about snowflakes whose myspace and facebook pages get them in trouble, cost them jobs, or become persistent nuisances throughout their daily lives, etc.  I believe these essays will follow their authors around like a piece of toilet paper stuck to their shoe.  Well, for those of us who believe in justice it is a comforting thought.

[leontrout]

"Leontrout, don't you see that it is your unreasonable hatred of grandmothers that kills them off, only to reanimate them and have them die again and again?"

Dammit, man! There are zombie grandmothers out there! They want brains! Brains, I tell you!

And they're coming!

Arrgh .....

[leontrout]

"I believe these essays will follow their authors around like a piece of toilet paper stuck to their shoe."

At some point in this cheese festival, I actually asserted (more snottily than necessary) that I think some of these kids are headed for "the profession." Not because academics are always sometimes infrequently real rectums but because they all have some real writing talent, albeit the bloggily snarkish kind that smacks of hipster d-baggery. They will grow up and at least one of them will join the ranks of the professoriate. First, however, they will have a come-to-Jeebus event that will get them the heck over themselves. Then they will write literally readable things that they can put on their CVs, m'kay? (There are a couple of shoutouts to my homegirl in that sentence.)

One thing about having this kind of whippersnapper in your seminars is that you can drag them aside and say, "You know, Michelle (or whoever), you're smart and funny and you try too hard. And also the cynicism is getting way old." 

[drgrieves]

I see what you're doing there, Leon (or Jeebus).

[temporaryname]

Ah, I just saw the third one myself. 

5) You should not be having more sex than I am. If you are, I'm begging you -- please keep the details to yourself. Your funny stories about how our exams not being graded somehow relates to the fact that your wife wanted to "get frisky" over the weekend? Yeah, please stop that.

I have to agree with this.  Oversharing, indeed.

Does anyone out there actually say stuff like this in their classes? I mean, aside from the one faculty member who apparently did this, and so therefore it's something that all faculty members, including the 99.999% of us who wouldn't even think of it, have to be warned about?

(Though I do think there's a subtle ageism thing going on--why exactly shouldn't faculty be having sex more often than our students?)

[temporaryname]

I'm tempted to see if I can get Blackboard to allow students to post anonymous comments so that I could allow mine to say whatever they wanted to say without fear of untoward consequences.  It might be enlightening.

You can with the new BB8.  It's one of the options on the Discussion Board after you've enabled a new forum.  (Right near "allow subscriptions to threads."

You're a brave soul, Conjugate.

I do this in every class I teach, online or face-to-face. (I always have a Blackboard site for syllabi and stuff for my face-to-face classes.) You have to have a really thick skin, and 95% of what you hear from students that way is narcissistic and pointless, but I've learned two or three worthwhile things from it, so I count it as a win.

[larryc]

The first entry is a list of five things from a student...

No it isn't. The writing does not sound like a student and is full of terms that students do not know or use--"Ph.D. candidates," "academic setting."

Gina Barreca made them up. J'accuse!

Edit: Ooops--I just went back and read more closely and I see that the blog is not claiming these are from a student at all. Nevermind.

[alleyoxenfree]

My reactions to those "5 Things" blogs:

3.  What exactly does Prof. Barreca find excellent about these screeds, other than that, by and large, they are punctuated correctly?

Lest we forget, this is the generation where every student got a trophy for participating in whatever activity, lest their self-esteem be damaged.  Barreca perpetuates that by applauding like a helicopter parent, "Yes, yes, yes, thank you for sharing, darling!"

How dare we not understand how hard life is for them now!

They share, they suffer, therefore they are.

[t_r_b]

I wonder if these were originally written to be read aloud in class. I suspect they were.

My point is that we keep in mind audience. Whether or not these were in fact read aloud, it seems to me that the intended audience of these screeds is not the supposedly offending professors, but rather the students' peers and classmates, as well as an instructor who likes to present herself as "one of the cool kids." It's almost a contest to see who can come up with the snarkiest digs at professors. Providing actual feedback to faculty isn't the point at all: if it were, the assignment would be designed to encourage the students to articulate their complaints in a way that faculty might actually take seriously.

Perhaps Barreca's original intent was for these to provide useful feedback. I can certainly imagine a writing prompt that would encourage that. Heck, she could use the exact same prompt, but add something like: "bear in mind that your goal is to convince faculty to act on your suggestions. Think about what kind of tone and mode of presenting your argument are most likely to achieve that goal." And then perhaps have a discussion in class where students talk about how they would respond to their classmates' lists, if they were the professor being addressed.

That kind of assignment might actually encourage students to think more seriously about audience, which would make them much better writers and communicators. Barreca's actual assignment, by contrast, doesn't seem likely to foster any kind of communication at all: just resentful and self-absorbed self-expression.

[terpsichore]

Students have been making jokes about professors' quirks and appearance forever.  What's new about this?

[t_r_b]

Students have been making jokes about professors' quirks and appearance forever.  What's new about this?

A professor is giving them academic credit for making such jokes about her colleagues.

[onion]

Students have been making jokes about professors' quirks and appearance forever.  What's new about this?

A professor is giving them academic credit for making such jokes about her colleagues.

And then "publishing" them in/on the Chronicle of Higher Education.

[leontrout]

1. Did she ask permission to publish these essays?

2. Did she explain that they are in no reasonable position to deny permission since they are her subordinates?

3. Did she expand upon that notion to encompass other inappropriate professorial behaviors re: "consenting" students?
 
4. Did she explain this publication and its readers?

[glowdart]

Students have been making jokes about professors' quirks and appearance forever.  What's new about this?

A professor is giving them academic credit for making such jokes about her colleagues.

I missed the layers of this at first, too. 

[terpsichore]

This doesn't seem like a terrible assignment to me. Likely it's one of many assignments of different lengths and topics in what Prof. Barreca describes as an "upper-division nonfiction creative-writing class".

I can also understand the impulse to share some of the replies with other academics, in all their rawness (some thoughtful, some immature, some nasty, some whiny). It's a little window into what one small group of students thinks, presented without comment.  

Probably it would have been wiser to publish the student writing under pseudonyms, given the response both here and on the comments to the blog.