In find it especially lovely when the day before the final exam, a student sends me the following email (this is the entire text of the email with no editing on my part):
i got a zero on the final essay so what am i suppose to get a bad grade or what i need a good grade in this course so what do i do now
Not to get all Ayn-Randian on people, but I find this reference to what the student needs to be especially jarring. Why exactly am I supposed to care about your needs, you strange creature? Have you done anything to motivate me to care about what you need? I needed you to participate in your class sessions and I assigned 20% of the final grade to participation to motivate you to speak in class. I needed you to write a final essay and offered all kinds of assistance. I also needed you to learn how to write an acceptable email in an academic setting and I dedicated 30 minutes of class time to a Power Point presentation on the subject.
So what exactly is supposed to make me care about your unreasonable needs right now?
Current mood: very annoyed.
P.S. Three hours before the final exam, I meet this student in the hallway. He pretends not to notice me. It’s a really smart move to be rude to a professor on the day of the final when you know you’ve already failed the essay.
P.P.S. I’ve scheduled a spa session for next week because teaching freshmen this year has made me kind of bitter. People used to call me Little Miss Sunshine, which was annoying to a woman of my age, but I’d rather be that than Old Mrs. Winter Storm.
Clarissa's Blog 
Maybe this student should consider that to be a crash course in learning the hard lessons about what too much entitlement and too little effort gets you.
LikeLike
He practically tossed the final exam at me. His resentment was so obvious that the other students laughed.
LikeLike
Maybe he was too embarrassed to look at you in the hallway. I probably would be if I were in his position.
LikeLike
Wow. Please tell me that at least English isn’t this person’s first language…
LikeLike
The first and only. 😦
LikeLike
One of these days we have to compare notes, the e-mails I have gotten over the past seven days (final exam was yesterday) are just… well, I would say “un-real”, but that would make me sound like them 🙂
LikeLike
It’s kind of nice to know that this isn’t just me and that other profs get the same kind of stuff.
LikeLike
Ha!!! I loved this post and run in to the same problem. Freshman are their own breed. 😉 But this line was the best: “Why exactly am I supposed to care about your needs, you strange creature?” I am going to think that in my head every time a student acts entitled. 😉
LikeLike
And this is a great life lesson, I believe, that people should learn as early as possible. Nobody will care about your needs if you fail to reciprocate. Not only will one suffer professionally with this entitled attitude, but their personal and social lives will be a sad, lonely desert, too.
LikeLike