People seem to forget that "Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote" arrives, it really results in sleepless wide-eyed pilgrims yearning for foreign lands. Never mind the "tendre croppes and yonge sonne:" break out the espresso, the grading pens, and the sudden attraction to the newspaper's travel section. Alas, the showers here are coming in abundance, even with, today, bone-cold cubelets of hail. Not. Helping. The. Grading. And the grading is not helping the sleep. Not only have I the issue of Mr. Pay-to-Play (see earlier post), but I have a member of the species discipulus iratus, aka, Angry Student, who substitutes snarling drivel for analysis so that the resulting (low, low) grade can be chalked up to my "disagreement" with DI's "opinion." DI often begins with sweeping statements about American and the world, moving onto how the reading to be analyzed is: a) sarcastic; b)out of touch with the average American; c) intellectually worthless; d) shouldn't be studied by anyone who wants to improve their [sic] life. I do not want to change DI; I want to throttle DI. Being who I am, it is the (lack of) reasoning and argumentation that gets to me most. I am perfectly willing to at least take seriously, with a clenched jaw, well-argued vituperations, because, heck, at least I can respond in kind, and heck, yes, because at least there is something there to grade. In this case, however, my fantasy is to whip out a cigarette lighter (I don't smoke) and burn the thing right in front of him in class. Worse, at this morning's earlier than usual awakening, my first thought after "why am I awake ?" was about how pissed I am about this paper, this student. "@$$hole !" I mentally exclaimed, and then went on some in fanstasied exhortation, in detail and argument unworthy of the slime presented to me in the place of thought, about what was wrong with it. WHY is this getting to me ? (Don't answer that; we all know why. The reasons, like demons, are legion.) Okay, no. misery loves company, O Pilgrims of April: in 200 words or less, please describe the office hour conversation-appropriate substitute for THROTTLING DI WITH MY BARE HANDS AND LIGHTING HIS HAIR ON FIRE. Thank you.PS Gif image is offered FREE HERE. Take that, photobucket, which says it violates their terms of use. For WHAT ?
The mass shooting in Oregon shows how two-year colleges respond to a crisis
with limited means at hand.
8 years ago
Oh, Cranky, first of all, I'm sorry to hear that you had to deal with all that! (((Cranky)))
ReplyDeleteIt's timely: I have been walking around in a slow-burning rage after a DI conversation this week, in which DI proceeded to belittle the primary subject matter of our course in such a way that pointed out quite clearly that ze did not do much of the reading, nor did ze listen to much of anything we discussed, apparently. (I also don't need to hear about how ze is so "over" school and full of senioritis. I really had to hold back from saying, Then Why Don't You Just Do Us All A Favor And Leave Right NOW?) Like you, I absolutely carry around the anger afterwards. And toss and turn because I'm upset. So I'm going to eavesdrop on what people suggest for your situation and then pretend-apply them to mine! :)
(You know what was interesting about the experience, though? I realized after I'd calmed down a little bit how MUCH I care about the subject matter, and how part of my anger stemmed from the DI not taking the opportunity to learn something wonderful. Didn't expect that.)
Oh, and my own suggestion for your DI is to give the paper a D without spending one additional moment of your time to pen any comments (proper treatment for anyone who does any of those things, particularly stating that such-and-such an assigned reading is "intellectually worthless," which is so utterly devoid of academic audience awareness that it might even deserve an F).
ReplyDeleteOr, contrarily, you could have lots of fun responding to each and every point in great detail. Whatever would make you feel better!
Wow, thanks for answering Ink. After my last two posts, it was getting kind of chilly in here. I like everything you said, but I'm especially thinking of what you said about realizing how much you love your subject matter. It's so true--- I am so invested, and when a student realizes that and tries to play with it (maybe I'm giving DI too much credit, but DI has done other passive-aggressive type things), it really flips the fire on.
ReplyDeleteI agree. (I do love your bowl of fire graphic, btw.) Passive-aggressiveness in general makes me crazy. Roar!
ReplyDeleteVery much appreciate your writing about this subject, Cranky. Thanks! And good luck not throttling anyone! ;)
Hi gals,
ReplyDeleteI'm too cranky today to comment, but please know I share the pain!!
Photobucket tried to take away my bowl. My FREE for the taking bowl. Please go to the url, upload more, and click "share" to use with blogger or something else. Please drive Photobucket crazy. How the HELL could it violate their terms of use ? I've never had anything this exciting happen to me. Have written to both proprietors. Meanwhile, I have put it back. Geez.
ReplyDeleteGeez! That's bizarre since it says right on that page you can use it! Maybe Photobucket is confused by the creepy Flaming Ghost gif and panicking? ;)
ReplyDeleteMy verification was "obenally"--doesn't that sound like something fun?
ReplyDeleteWoohoo, let's go have an obenally!