Welcome To My Hell

To my students who sit in the back row of my Ancient History class:

Drop the class already. We know you do not want to be there. How? Well, let me count the ways…

First, I can tell by the eagerness in which you come to my class. You are all always at least fifteen minutes late. Never once do you apologize even though you interrupt my lectures. Oh, and you do know lateness negatively affects your class participation grade, right? Does that stop you? Of course not.

It could also be the fact that your little group is always having some sort of conversation going on that has absolutely nothing to do with what I am teaching. I have told you all many times to shut up. At first I was polite about it. After the tenth time, however, I was threatening to kick you all out of my class. You behaved the next class but then went right back to your old ways. I do not want to teach fifth grade so stop acting like you are in it.

If you are not talking, then you are either text messaging your other friends or sleeping. By the way, you all snore.

If you do not want to drop the class because you do not feel that your outside conversations are so bad, then let me give you another reason. Your grades are so bad that you will not pass my class anyways. Heck, I even caught two of you plagiarizing your papers which means you get a zero on that assignment. That mathematically makes it impossible for you to pass even if you did have a 100 test average (which you are no where near by the way).

So please, for the sake of my sanity and the students who actually want to be in class and…gasp!...learn something, drop the damn class already.

I am technically on Spring Break this week but since I have the three foot thick stack o' papers to grade I figured I would go in for a few hours today.

Talk about creepy. Everything was quiet. Creepy quiet. Even the secretaries were quieter than normal. Part of me was thankful for the quiet but another part of me wanted to crank up the speakers on my computer and blast some Led Zeppelin.

Why is it that students can't follow instructions? I give them a very simple assignment. Before they write their term papers, they are to outline their information first and give me a bibliography. Not too tough right? Hell, I even give them an example of the type of outline I am looking for along with a sample bibliography. Couldn't be easier, eh? Ya right.

On the first paper I come across, the student did not even have the right topic. He was supposed to do a biography of Karl Marx. Instead, he gave me the ins and outs of Marxism and whether or not it "works." Good ol' zero on that one. Rolls eyes.

The next one doesn't even have a bibliography attached. Ah, a 50 for that one since they did half the assignment correctly. Sigh.

The third...oooh wait. Could this be? Whoohoo! It was a really crappy outline and the bibliography didn't follow Chicago Style but she at least followed instructions. You know it's a sad day when you are overjoyed by the fact that at least one student followed the assignment properly.

I got through about 15 papers before I gave up. There is only so much abuse I will put myself through on vacation.

I decided to go for a new look for this blog and when I came across this design I said "this is it!" So what the hell does toast have to do with me? Well, the condition of bread is the way I describe my mind as the semester goes along. For example:

Toasty - Mild state of stress but nothing a good hot bubble bath can't cure.
Crispy - Moderate state of stress that usually requires large amounts of alcohol to cure.
Fried - Severe state of stress. The only thing that cures this is the end of the semester.
Burnt - My brain now represents a burnt piece of toast. Nothing cures that.

It is now officially spring break. While my students are off to the lands of the Caribbean or Florida, I'm stuck here in the cold and snow. I should be watching my beloved Red Sox down in their spring training camp, but my schools decided to have breaks at different times. Thank you for that fun bit.

Since I won't be basking under the Florida sun, I instead will spend this next week grading all the lovely and supposedly brilliant papers written by my students. Unfortunately, their version of "brilliant" and my version are very, very different. As I am skimming through the stack o' hell papers, I am noticing a few things that should not be done in a history paper:

• Henry VIII should not be referred to as a "man-whore"
• The word pharaoh is not spelled "faro"
• Heck, the whole not using spell-check thing is just not cool
• Multiple paragraphs are a Good Thing, not just one long one
• See above but change "paragraph" to "sentence"
• Copying and pasting my notes into your paper is a Bad Thing
• Using freeessay.com will only give you an F in my class (thank you Turnitin.com)
• Handing in a paper that you wrote for me in another class just pisses me off and you will get an F on this version.

Oh this is going to be such a fun week. Fucking hell.

…in my Ancient History class.

Why do you people even bother showing up to my class? It’s clearly evident that you do not want to be there. You talk with each other, you text message your friends, and if I am lucky, you fall asleep in class. I know it is a 3pm class and I’m probably cutting into your prime nap time. Hell, I’d rather be sleeping too, but the head of my department said I needed to teach this class.

Well, since history isn’t your “thing,” at least have the courtesy to not show up. There are actually some students in the class who…OMG…actually want to be there and learn something! What a shock! For their sake, and the sake of my sanity, just drop the damn class. With the grades you’ve been getting, there is no way in hell that you would pass anyway. Do us all a favor. You have two more weeks to drop. Even that is enough time to get your lazy ass out of bed, walk over to your computer and drop the class via WebAdvisor. Come on, it isn’t that hard.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
-- Mark Twain

...to understand that "no late papers will be accepted," means no late papers will be accepted?

I'm still getting e-mails from students asking me if they can hand in their papers because their computers crashed. So why are you telling me now and not when they were due? Ugh.