The Venting Thread

[the_geneticist]

Every class in my CC is like this. I repeatedly told them both verbally and in writing in the tests to put down their name and student ID on both the question sheet and answer booklet. 80% of the students did not listen. Every time a student did not do that, I talked loudly about it for everybody to listen. Yet, the remaining students repeated the same mistake. Last week, we had a test in the middle of the semester. Even I had my name written on the board in BIG letters, two students told me that they did not know my name! They don't know my name in the middle of the term?  Even I told them endless number of times to remember a special symbol and I made it clear that it would be asked on the test many many times, half of them made a mistake. Am I teaching pigs?

No, you are teaching students.  They have lots to learn, but they are not "pigs".  You obviously have a lot of anger and contempt for your students.  Don't let two students who admitted they didn't know your name ruin your opinion of your entire class.  Let it go.

[downer]

Hamburger was venting. This is a venting threat. I'm not enthusiastic about people telling others not to be so upset on this thread.

[hamburger]

Hamburger was venting. This is a venting threat. I'm not enthusiastic about people telling others not to be so upset on this thread.

Exactly! My issue with them is not about not knowing my name but not writing down their name and ID regardless of the endless number of times I have told them to do so. The same group of students did the same thing in another test. I just gave another example about their ignorant.

[mamselle]

Sorry (unrelated to above), but no, a blog site with big pictures and large text do not an "informational hub" make.

Most blogs like that are just displaying their own ignorance--it's "new!" And "exciting!" only because they have no knowledge of the field and have no idea how much serious, deep work has gone into studying the stuff they're bloviating about.

In fact, I won't even open 'em.

I'm all for encouraging interest and enthusiasm but we're supposed to represent over 100 years of work on this topic...not yesterday's nonsense.

Sheesh!

(Thank you. This is what comes from transcribing meeting minutes for a group whose work you've come to care about...you get to hear the good stuff twice, but the fact that the idiocracy seems to be winning is also doubly painful...)

M.

[the_geneticist]

Hamburger was venting. This is a venting threat. I'm not enthusiastic about people telling others not to be so upset on this thread.

Exactly! My issue with them is not about not knowing my name but not writing down their name and ID regardless of the endless number of times I have told them to do so. The same group of students did the same thing in another test. I just gave another example about their ignorant.

It is the venting thread.  Sorry. 
I was upset by you referring to your students as pigs (very offensive in some cultures/regions).

[smallcleanrat]

Stupid mistake. Messed up an experiment. Need to redo. Think I can make up for it next week so it shouldn't put me behind schedule. But I hate when I make stupid mistakes, which seems to be often these days. I hate having to tell my PI I made a stupid mistake.

I miss the days when my brain worked better.

[mamselle]

I get seasons of befuddled brain sometimes, too.

Scariest was when I went through early menopause at age 37 and suddenly couldn't recall dance combinations (always taught on the fly, in class, and I used to be 'first-up' in line, ready to perform them correctly)...then, suddenly I was goofing them up and didn't know why my short-term memory had vanished.

I was also, as it happened, working on my thesis, and was terrified, after I realized what the issue was, that I was doomed not to be able to write it. (I did.)

I did, also, find work-arounds: better record-keeping since my old ability to see a reference on a page (and know the book and page no.) were gone; saying things out loud to myself, saying all the "wrong words" when hit with a "tip-of-the-tongue" moment until I worked my way through to the right one, etc.

My aural short-term memory was better than my visual idetic imagery, as it turned out, but the time to discovery on that compensation was wearying.

And it required honest mourning.

Not quite the same, maybe, but way will open.

M.

[alto_stratus]

(unrelated)  You know, there are ways not to spread illness. #1 is stay home when you are sick. #2 don't hug people. #3 don't cough into your hand and stick your hand in the potato chips. #4 if your doctor told you "DON'T, under any circumstances, touch your eye," don't touch your eye while you are quoting your doctor... and breaking rules 1-3. *facepalm*

[mamselle]

Sorry for the ongoing vent: I have NO interest in this transcription. Zero.

No-one will read it, no-one will take any of the brilliance it records into account, they won't even recall their own scintillating contributions at the next meeting (after 4 years' experience with twice-yearly meetings, I have observational evidence).

I have the attention span of a flea for it (hence all my posts in the last few hours...ahem).

It's getting done slowly but surely and I'll have it ready as promised, on time.

But it's truly like pulling teeth, one at a time, by the roots without novocaine.

   OK, back to work...

Oh--a second vent: Doesn't ANYBODY ever edit the online news entries anymore???  They're HORRIBLE!

I should get a job editing for them, but I'd go nuts for sure, then.

(Guess what else I've been doing when I don't want to transcribe...Google Newsfeed draws my eye...and again....and again...)

   OK, back to work for real, now.

M.

[ab_grp]

I am just going to say that various aches and pains that come from merely existing sure make getting older fun.

[mamselle]

I am just going to say that various aches and pains that come from merely existing sure make getting older fun.

OUCH!

Sorry to hear you're going through that.

All good thoughts.

M.

[ab_grp]

Thank you, Mamselle, for the kind thoughts.  I am feeling a bit whiny as this week is my anniversary trip around the sun kind of thing, and between these different mysterious injuries (which I'd guess are related... compensate for this, get that, then compensate and get the other thing) plus early mornings and unrelated dentist and doctor appointments and other US and global worries, argh.  I just feel a little run down in a lot of ways.  I know I've probably got the least of it.

[mamselle]

I hope your year-to-date analysis allows for some tracking of your accomplishments--which will have occurred, in fact, in spite of the pain, anxiety, frustration at the truculence of moving b9dy parts, etc.

Many satisfactory returns of the day, whichever one it is, this week.

M.

[ab_grp]

Thank you Mamselle, it was yesterday, so your post was well timed.  I haven't done the year in review yet but am very much looking forward to trying to celebrate this weekend if I don't sleep through it.  But, the week is over! And, as my youngest (15yo) wrote on the card she made for me, "[Me]: [# Years on Earth], Death: 0".  Fortunately she's a better artist than greeting card content designer, and I do appreciate the sentiment. 

[Parasaurolophus]

Y'know that feeling when you assigned a reading because it looked interesting, but you read it the night before you have to teach it and it turns out to be (1) bad on formal grounds, (2) straight-up anti-feminist backlash, (3) one giant straw man, (4) ill-informed, and (5) has a super(!)-racist aside near the end?

Yup. Just had to teach that. Sigh.