Different Professors

Published by

Clarissa

September 16, 2016

I have noticed the following interesting phenomenon. Professors who graduated from not-so-prestigious programs keep saying things like “We get inferior-quality students here. If only we got the kind of students that they get at Harvard / Princeton / MIT, then it would be really easy to teach. We need to ride their asses to show them what it means to have high standards.”

On the other hand, professors who graduated from Stanford / Johns Hopkins/ Brown, etc say “Our students are exactly the same as students at Stanford / Cornell / Princeton, etc. Students are the same everywhere. There is no point in being all ‘two absences and you fail the course!’ or “an A is 90%. 89,99% is a B!’”

Works every single time.

Rate this:

7 responses to “Different Professors ”

David Gendron

September 16, 2016

This would not work with me.

“There is no point in being all ‘two absences and you fail the course!’ or “an A is 90%. 89,99% is a B”.”

WHAT?

LikeLike

Reply
1. Clarissa
  
  September 16, 2016
  
  There is also stuff like “The assignment has to be emailed before 3:59. So if it’s time-stamped 4:00, YOU FAIL!”
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  1. David Gendron
    
    September 16, 2016
    
    I know the last one very well. (Some use a 10% per working day rule)
    
    LikeLike
    
    Reply
    1. Clarissa
      
      September 16, 2016
      
      People should get a life.
      
      LikeLike
      
      Reply
      1. David Gendron
        
        September 16, 2016
        
        They all do that. You’re the only one that I know who doesn’t.
        
        LikeLike
        
        Reply
TomW

September 16, 2016

I am in total agreement on all the draconian nonsense.

If a student has a huge chemistry exam the same day a paper is due in my class, I understand the decision to study for the exam and finish my paper the next day. I can’t read all of the papers at the same time and getting a few of them a day or two later is zero inconvenience for me.

I do tend to be strict with the number to letter conversion at the end, but I am fairly generous about everything else all semester, so if the number isn’t there, they probably don’t deserve the higher grade.

LikeLike

Reply
Veronica

September 18, 2016

Ah well, I’m one of the professors that you hate. I have quite loosey-goosey deadlines in my upper-division classes, because those are small and have a handful of relatively high-stakes assignments. A late paper here and there is no big deal: ten points off the top for every day it is late. But in my freshman-level surveys, where they have low-stakes two-page assignments due every other Friday, those hard copies are either in my hand at 2 p.m. sharp or they are late and I am not taking them.

The primary reason: people are people, and they do things at the last minute. Before I had this policy, on every day a paper was due, roughly 15 of the 50 students in the class would show up anywhere from two minutes to half an hour late, open the door at the front of the classroom, walk in and throw everybody’s attention off for the next thirty seconds as they dropped their paper off and wandered around looking for an empty seat.

The secondary reason: I teach at a place with a 4/4 load. I often have three sections of fifty students, which means 150 short papers coming in every other week. I have neither the time nor the inclination to deal with late papers in that situation. (I should mention that this is a “three lowest grades are dropped” kind of thing, so if your car wouldn’t start on some random day, it shouldn’t really be a big deal.)

LikeLike

Reply

Clarissa's Blog