Thursday, November 6, 2008

Irritating Questions

As the semester comes to an end, students seem to ask questions which are more and more unnecessary and/or annoying. Here are some of the questions which irritate me the most:

1. “Do you curve?”
I have said this hundreds of times and it is in your syllabus – I do not curve.
2. “When is the paper due?”
Why not look at the paper topic or on your syllabus?
3. “Can we get extra credit assignments?”
Why should I give you and myself extra work when your problem was that you could not finish the assigned work on time in the first place?
4. “Will grammar matter in the paper?”
Yes. What did you expect?
5. “Can you tell me what my grade is in this class?”
Can’t you do the math since you have all the necessary information?

Does anyone else find these questions annoying?

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Work: What with the elections and the work, things have been crazy. I am counting to the end of the semester. Gregg and I are both presenting at Northeastern next week and I am on page 2 of that paper. Long weekend ahead.

Fall color: PA looks beautiful right now. I love the changing leaves and the mild cold.

1 comment:

Kathleen said...

I totally relate! I have a huge class this semester and to try to avoid getting these types of questions from 100+ students, one thing that helped is that I gave a quiz on the syllabus on the second day of class. This forced them to read it at least.

Love your response to the question about extra credit, and what a student's class grade is. Um... write down your grades on all assignments that far, and how much they're worth, and you can figure it out yourself - it's not that complicated?!! My favorite is when students are like, what grade on the final do I need to get an "X" in the class. Right, so you'll study *just* enough to get that grade, no more, no less??