Favorite student emails

[Morden]

I've had the occasional student from some other university in my class; I don't know how or why. Bounce the email over to the Registrar's.

[science.expat]

Lots of universities have agreements with neighbouring ones that could explain the request.

[bio-nonymous]

Got an odd one today:

Good afternoon!

    Hope you are doing well! My name is [student] and I am an incoming sophomore majoring in Cell and Molecular Biology at [Other University]. I am trying to take the [Basketweaving 101 lab] at your institution and was wondering what steps I needed to take to enroll. I was also wondering if I could possibly get a syllabus for the course as it is required to approve the transfer credit at my school. I have completed all the prerequisites at my current university. Thank you so much!

Best,
[not my student]

Apply for and get accepted at [This University]? I don't think we allow students to do a la carte registration during the academic year.

Some places do allow students to take a certain number of credits without being admitted, or being admitted to a "general education college" with different requirements, ostensibly designed for [beginning] returning adult students. I agree to forward/refer it to the registrars office or admissions.

[the_geneticist]

Got an odd one today:

Good afternoon!

    Hope you are doing well! My name is [student] and I am an incoming sophomore majoring in Cell and Molecular Biology at [Other University]. I am trying to take the [Basketweaving 101 lab] at your institution and was wondering what steps I needed to take to enroll. I was also wondering if I could possibly get a syllabus for the course as it is required to approve the transfer credit at my school. I have completed all the prerequisites at my current university. Thank you so much!

Best,
[not my student]

Apply for and get accepted at [This University]? I don't think we allow students to do a la carte registration during the academic year.

Some places do allow students to take a certain number of credits without being admitted, or being admitted to a "general education college" with different requirements, ostensibly designed for [beginning] returning adult students. I agree to forward/refer it to the registrars office or admissions.

We do have an "extension" program that allows students to take a class or two, I'd forgotten about that.  I'll email the student to let them know who to contact.
Problem is: the lab is not a stand-alone class and it doesn't count for science majors (no prerequisites).
Ah well, that's not my problem to solve.  The student would honestly have a better chance of getting into the class for science majors as the non-majors version always has a huge waitlist.

[Hegemony]

Aurgh, I am being besieged by disgruntled students:

"Dear Proffessor, I do not like the score I got on my last paper, also my midterm, I do not feel good about these scores. I need to take those over again so I can live up to my model of my self. I ask you then to set it up so I can do those again."

and:

"Hi Heg, You said the paper had to be 1000-1200 words but I can't fit in what I need to say in 1200 words. On my last paper you said I did not use enough examples or facts so I need more words so I can follow your instructions. I need at least 2000 words, that is the length where I do my best work. So I will write 2000 words for this paper so I can do what you told me to do."

It's funny that all the other students manage to fit facts and examples in their 1200-word papers. It must be some kind of physics anomaly. And of course I will let the first student completely redo the paper and the midterm, which means I will have to let all 49 other students redo theirs as well, but what are 98 new assignments to grade? It's worth it to make the customer happy, right?

(And these are just the ones that have arrived in the last half hour. What is UP with these people?? Grumble, grumble.)

[mamselle]

As the Brits say, they're "trying it on."

I'd call the first one's bluff, and explain to the other one that staying within text limits is an important skill to have in the "real world."

As in, I've written for journalism: if you get x column inches, your paragraph can get cut off mid-sentence, or just about, if you overrun it.

So...a dose of real life for each...medicine for the soul.

M.

[kaysixteen]

Random questions:

1) Could this be something to do with the pandemic, kids overstressed, wigging out, etc., much moreso than would otherwise be expected?  On the front page of today's Boston Globe, today, there was a headline reading 'Welcome to College.  Now Go to Your Room.'  You can perhaps guess the trajectory of this article...

2)  WRT writing papers substantially longer than the high-end of the assignment:  is this not better than underwriting the thing, (and this is important) so long as the thing is well-written, answers the questions in full, does not use excessively wordy or irrelevant language, and, perhaps, might even answer some points that the professor may not even have contemplated when issuing the assignment (I recall getting an A+ for a survey class I took in grad school 'Intro to Romance Linguistics' for writing about 18pp for an assignment for a 'mini-paper' 3-5pp., that had a specific assignment to answer.  I answered it.  In full, and very well (I was highly motivated for this).   I still cannot see how it could possibly have been competently answered in 5pp.   Having done this, I did it again, with the same success, for the second 'mini-paper' assignment that semester).

[the_geneticist]

Random questions:

1) Could this be something to do with the pandemic, kids overstressed, wigging out, etc., much moreso than would otherwise be expected?  On the front page of today's Boston Globe, today, there was a headline reading 'Welcome to College.  Now Go to Your Room.'  You can perhaps guess the trajectory of this article...

2)  WRT writing papers substantially longer than the high-end of the assignment:  is this not better than underwriting the thing, (and this is important) so long as the thing is well-written, answers the questions in full, does not use excessively wordy or irrelevant language, and, perhaps, might even answer some points that the professor may not even have contemplated when issuing the assignment (I recall getting an A+ for a survey class I took in grad school 'Intro to Romance Linguistics' for writing about 18pp for an assignment for a 'mini-paper' 3-5pp., that had a specific assignment to answer.  I answered it.  In full, and very well (I was highly motivated for this).   I still cannot see how it could possibly have been competently answered in 5pp.   Having done this, I did it again, with the same success, for the second 'mini-paper' assignment that semester).

In your second example, I would have only graded your first 5 pages.  Following directions is an excellent life skill.

[mamselle]

Yes, that's (just grading the amount of text required and no more) what I was implying.

I nearly circled back with an edit to add that idea: writing tight is indeed a life skill.

M.

[kaysixteen]

I admit the thought had crossed my mind back in the day that she might do this.  But the question given on the assignment could not be properly answered in 5pp.  I was a grad student, and knew this.  So what to do?   Had she done as you suggested I would have insisted that she tell me how I could have followed this direction and correctly answered the question, by telling me what parts of my paper could have been omitted, and still have answered it correctly.   I admit I have muse over the years as to why the page limit in the term paper was given as it was, when it was so manifestly too short to properly answer the question.  Since this woman was otherwise competent, if not brilliant (though her knowledge of Latin was nonexistent, which was surprising for someone who was supposedly a 'Romance linguist' (her language specialty was French), I basically have concluded, given my experience in this class and with the students in it (it was a required class for all MA students in the Romance language dept), that the student competence level was pretty low and she did not expect that the average student there would have been able to more completely answer the question, and the assignment was merely given as an overview.

[AvidReader]

I had a professor in graduate school who assigned huge topics (e.g. "describe the role of religion in this week's medieval text") with a hard 2 or 3 page limit. Those were the most difficult papers I've ever written, and I received some of the best feedback I've ever gotten. I think of that every time I apply for a grant or fellowship with a short page limit or word count. Great training for real life.

And I also would have stopped grading after page 5.

AR.

[OneMoreYear]

One of my mentors in grad school would tell me "I see you've given written a long report/paper/draft because you haven't taken the time to write a short one."  Writing concisely is skill, and, like others have said, is a skill directly applicable to grant applications and publication word limits. 

A teaching mentor used to say: Undergrads need page/word minimums; graduate students need page/word maximums.  While it's not universally true (some of the grad students I teach are overly concise in their written work), it's a general trend.

[kaysixteen]

I have heard arguments like this one.   They do sound more ego-driven than most.   Obviously the woman agreed with my decision to write the papers the way I did, answering her question.  But like I said, had I written the paper that way and been flunked, I would have insisted she tell me which data and conclusions I had written could have been omitted, and have the paper been successfully written.  I would expect no less from my students, but then again I do not give them max pp limits.

[Hegemony]

If I allow one student to write a paper twice the length of the assignment, I need to allow them all to do that. I certainly do not have the time to read twice as many pages as assigned. A 1000-word paper is not an extreme request. The topic is quite small, and they're asked to choose 1-2 examples from the reading and discuss them. This particular student is incredibly wordy — the kind who begins a paper "Ever since the beginning of civilization, people have wondered why things are the way they are. People have written books about it. Lots of people have wondered lots of things. In ancient Rome, a man named Pliny wrote about the way the world is. [Pliny is unrelated to the current course, but student has obviously taken Western Civ.] In ancient Greece, the Grecians wondered about it. Moses who wrote the bible probably wondered about these things too but we do not know everything he wondered about because many writings have been lost but probably not the bible because they discovered the lost parts in the dead sea. In the modern day people have also wondered..." Etc. etc.

[polly_mer]

I have heard arguments like this one.   They do sound more ego-driven than most.   Obviously the woman agreed with my decision to write the papers the way I did, answering her question.  But like I said, had I written the paper that way and been flunked, I would have insisted she tell me which data and conclusions I had written could have been omitted, and have the paper been successfully written.  I would expect no less from my students, but then again I do not give them max pp limits.

On how many grant panels, hiring committees, boards, or other positions that must make decisions based on written material have you served?

People who can't/won't/don't follow instructions on strict word limits and other formatting instructions are weeded immediately.  It's not for our egos that the limits exist; it's a practical matter of time and energy. Our job is to make a decision.  People who can't sort out important from unimportant lose every time. 

To make a decision, I don't have to know everything you know on a topic.  Instead, for decisions that matter, we make a first pass looking for the top three important items.  We can then follow up with the top five people to learn more.