I haven’t talked too much about the class I’m teaching.  I’m terribly disappointed in it, as it was pitched to me as one thing, and in reality, it has turned out to be drastically different.  If I had a crystal ball, I would have designed the course completely different, but alas, it took until about March to truly realize that most of what I was ’supposed’ to do wasn’t going to happen, so how do you improvise with more than half the semester gone?  I feel so bad for the kids.  Well.  Most of them.

It amazes me how I’ve got a couple of kids that are going to fail because they don’t turn assignments in.  How do you just not turn your work in?  I’m not asking them to do rocket science.  10 point assignments – just not done!  Whatever.

I do have one gem of a student though.  At one point I actually wished for this kid to threaten me, or someone else, so I could have a legit reason to throw him out of my class.

This is my kid that at midterm had a 0.  Because he had turned nothing in.  I told him to drop the class, because I had serious doubts as to his ability to pass.  He said he couldn’t, because he was only taking 12 credits (which is the minimum for full time), and he couldn’t drop below that.  But he was going to ‘work real hard’ to pass.

Ahem.

We’ve had 7 different assignments since then.  He turned in one.  He statistically cannot pass the class at this point.  Yet he shows up.  He makes stupid comments.  2 weeks ago I gave them a pop quiz – in the middle, he looks up at me, snaps and motions me over.  I said very loudly “Do NOT snap at me”.  Jackass.  He pointed to his answer on one question and said “Is this right?”  Um, you’re taking a quiz.  Not just  quiz, but I let them use their books.  So an open book quiz. WTF?  So I said “I’m not giving you the answer.  You’ve got your book right there!”  He said “Can you tell me where to find it in the book?”  My response was to very snottily say “Did you read like you were supposed to?”  He told me yes, so I said he should know exactly where to find it.

Last week I gave them another quiz.  Class starts at 9:30.  I handed out the quiz.  At 9:43 he walks in.  At 9:45 I collected the quizzes.  He had the nerve to ask me if he could go in the hall and finish.  Um, no.  I told him if he needed to finish he should come to class on time.

My favorite was today.  One of my classmates came to recruit students to participate in his research.  I said I’d give them extra credit if they would participate.  As soon as he found it was for extra credit, this dipshit starts waving his hand all around, yelling “Me, me, pick me man, I’m all over that”.  Of course he is.  I also gave them an extra credit opportunity to go listen to one of the local meteorologists talk about new media and how it’s changing journalism.  I actually wanted to require them going, but when I asked who wasn’t available, several raised their hands.  Bummer.  So I offered it for extra credit.  This kid informed that if it involved extra credit, he’d make himself available.

So let me get this straight.  You don’t do the assigned work in the class, the one thing you did do was piss poor, but you’re going to make yourself available for 5 points of extra credit?

Smashing.

I’m ready for this semester to be over.