Favorite student emails

[secundem_artem]

"Hello, Partner and I were working on our presentation and realized that we didn't write down our topic number. We thought that we were topic #1 but I figured I should just confirm with you just to be sure."

Should I give them the wrong topic #?  Presentation is due on Thursday and just now, they've realized they don't know what topic they have??????

[the_geneticist]

"Hello, Partner and I were working on our presentation and realized that we didn't write down our topic number. We thought that we were topic #1 but I figured I should just confirm with you just to be sure."

Should I give them the wrong topic #?  Presentation is due on Thursday and just now, they've realized they don't know what topic they have??????

Wow.  Just wow.
I'd tell them the correct topic, they are already enough in a FAFO situation.
Plus, you don't want to give them any reason to claim you were mean or unfair or tricked them.

[kaysixteen]

FAFO situation?

[Sea_Ice]

"Hello, Partner and I were working on our presentation and realized that we didn't write down our topic number. We thought that we were topic #1 but I figured I should just confirm with you just to be sure."

Should I give them the wrong topic #?  Presentation is due on Thursday and just now, they've realized they don't know what topic they have??????

Wow.  Just wow.
I'd tell them the correct topic, they are already enough in a FAFO situation.
Plus, you don't want to give them any reason to claim you were mean or unfair or tricked them.

Yes - keep it all on them, while being very kindly helpful!  Don't give them any ammunition!

[secundem_artem]

FAFO situation?

Fvck around and find out

[Puget]

Registration for spring opens this week - About a dozen versions of the same email saying that while they have not taken any of the prerequisites for my seminar they are SO INTERESTED, have taken other (unrelated) courses in the field so they feel prepared, and will work REALLY HARD so can't I over-ride the prerequisites for them?

Nope, not going to happen no matter how much you try to flatter me. Believe it or not they are there for your own good. Find a seminar you actually have the prerequisites for.

[kaysixteen]

Do you find more of these sorts of 'make an exception for me' requests. esp wrt overriding of prereqs, now than you have at the onset of your career?

And, forgive me but I do not recall your field-- have you ever said yes to such an override request?

[the_geneticist]

Registration for spring opens this week - About a dozen versions of the same email saying that while they have not taken any of the prerequisites for my seminar they are SO INTERESTED, have taken other (unrelated) courses in the field so they feel prepared, and will work REALLY HARD so can't I over-ride the prerequisites for them?

Nope, not going to happen no matter how much you try to flatter me. Believe it or not they are there for your own good. Find a seminar you actually have the prerequisites for.

I get only a handful of those since my classes are either freshmen-level with minimal prerequisites or non-majors with 0 prerequisites.  I do have to remind students that they have to register for BOTH a lab & a lecture (the term "corequisite" is confusing to freshmen).

Instead, for these non-majors classes I get the joy of saying "you cannot register for a section that is full" and "talk with your advisor about other courses you could take" and "waitlists are automatically managed by [system], the way they work is [text from Registrar site]" and "lab sections have a maximum of [N] seats, this due to fire code.  No, we will not add additional seats".

[the_geneticist]

Do you find more of these sorts of 'make an exception for me' requests. esp wrt overriding of prereqs, now than you have at the onset of your career?

And, forgive me but I do not recall your field-- have you ever said yes to such an override request?

I've taught upper-division courses at a previous job.  If a class has "true prerequisites", then it's because the students need that knowledge to be successful.

Letting in a student with not enough background is a recipe for sadness & struggle.  There are lots of other courses they can take instead (like the prerequisites!). 

[Puget]

Do you find more of these sorts of 'make an exception for me' requests. esp wrt overriding of prereqs, now than you have at the onset of your career?

And, forgive me but I do not recall your field-- have you ever said yes to such an override request?

I've taught upper-division courses at a previous job.  If a class has "true prerequisites", then it's because the students need that knowledge to be successful.

Letting in a student with not enough background is a recipe for sadness & struggle.  There are lots of other courses they can take instead (like the prerequisites!). 

Yes exactly - they need to understand that they don't exist because we're mean, they exist for the good of the students. I only over-ride when they've taken a substantially similar class elsewhere (they can send me the syllabus to evaluate).

Requests have gone up this year, but I think it is largely because my course now ticks two boxes for one of the majors it counts toward and some of the other options for that are no longer options for complex reasons, so it is very attractive for reasons that have little to do with actual interest in the topic.

[kaysixteen]

All good points--I am wondering, however, how one determines what prior knowledge is essential for any given non-101-type class, vs. simply using a prereq as a way of restricting class to majors or otherwise limiting the number of enrollees?

I only ever asked to get into a class where I did not possess the prereqs-- I was denied,and 36 years later I still think I had a good case to be made.

[Puget]

All good points--I am wondering, however, how one determines what prior knowledge is essential for any given non-101-type class, vs. simply using a prereq as a way of restricting class to majors or otherwise limiting the number of enrollees?

I only ever asked to get into a class where I did not possess the prereqs-- I was denied,and 36 years later I still think I had a good case to be made.

This is in the sciences. You have to know stuff, cumulatively. I don't think this is controversial. Maybe in the humanities it is different, but the idea should at least be familiar to you from language courses.

[marshwiggle]

All good points--I am wondering, however, how one determines what prior knowledge is essential for any given non-101-type class, vs. simply using a prereq as a way of restricting class to majors or otherwise limiting the number of enrollees?

I only ever asked to get into a class where I did not possess the prereqs-- I was denied,and 36 years later I still think I had a good case to be made.

This is in the sciences. You have to know stuff, cumulatively. I don't think this is controversial. Maybe in the humanities it is different, but the idea should at least be familiar to you from language courses.

My daughter took humanities, and it was really strange to me that so many 2nd year courses only required that a student be in 2nd year; what specific courses they had taken didn't matter. The idea seemed to be that any first year course would teach essay writing, etc.

(For Kay) In STEM, not only do certain courses require specific content from courses in the same area, but often there are things like mathematical techniques that come up in several courses, and how a course is taught depends on whether a student has taken a course which introduced that technique. (It's really inefficient to "teach" that same technique in every course that uses it.)
So, often if a course has to be moved (for scheduling reasons) to a different term, then the content may have to change. E.g. if A and B both use some math technique, if A is taught first then B can assume it. If B has to move before A, then B will have to teach it, and A can assume it. Whichever course has to teach it will obviously be able to cover less field-specific content as a result.

I'm surprised that courses in humanities don't seem to depend so much on context from other courses. For instance, a course in North American 20th century literature would seem to be approached differently if students had previously taken 19th century British literature, ( or ANY literature course, for that matter).

I'm kind of curious how that works otherwise.

[the_geneticist]

In STEM, there are often multiple levels of a course too.  You can take an advanced ecology class, which will have a prerequisite of already taking introductory ecology.  You can teach the advanced class with the assumption that students understand the key concepts & go a lot deeper with more complex examples.
Other classes will have a list of several courses & the students need to have taken at least one.  For example, if I taught a class on cancer genetics, I'd want the students to have taken a class on basic genetics or cell biology or molecular biology.  They wouldn't need all of those, but at least one.

[apl68]

All good points--I am wondering, however, how one determines what prior knowledge is essential for any given non-101-type class, vs. simply using a prereq as a way of restricting class to majors or otherwise limiting the number of enrollees?

I only ever asked to get into a class where I did not possess the prereqs-- I was denied,and 36 years later I still think I had a good case to be made.

This is in the sciences. You have to know stuff, cumulatively. I don't think this is controversial. Maybe in the humanities it is different, but the idea should at least be familiar to you from language courses.

My daughter took humanities, and it was really strange to me that so many 2nd year courses only required that a student be in 2nd year; what specific courses they had taken didn't matter. The idea seemed to be that any first year course would teach essay writing, etc.

(For Kay) In STEM, not only do certain courses require specific content from courses in the same area, but often there are things like mathematical techniques that come up in several courses, and how a course is taught depends on whether a student has taken a course which introduced that technique. (It's really inefficient to "teach" that same technique in every course that uses it.)
So, often if a course has to be moved (for scheduling reasons) to a different term, then the content may have to change. E.g. if A and B both use some math technique, if A is taught first then B can assume it. If B has to move before A, then B will have to teach it, and A can assume it. Whichever course has to teach it will obviously be able to cover less field-specific content as a result.

I'm surprised that courses in humanities don't seem to depend so much on context from other courses. For instance, a course in North American 20th century literature would seem to be approached differently if students had previously taken 19th century British literature, ( or ANY literature course, for that matter).

I'm kind of curious how that works otherwise.

Actually there are such things as prerequisite courses in the humanities.  But pathways through majors do seem to be more flexible, so they're evidently not as common.  When I was a grad student, I served as a teaching assistant in a history field--colonial Latin America--outside my area of concentration--early modern Britain.  I was considered qualified to do that because I was familiar with the early modern West in general, and because I knew Spanish and was researching Spanish as well as English sources for my dissertation.  I would assume that in STEM a grad student wouldn't be as likely to reach across fields like that.