The Venting Thread

[clean]

Student emails me Friday night at 831 pm asking why there are penalty points on the portion of the final.**   I ignored the email.  The student sent the exact same email at 1030 this morning.  I ignored it.  At 640 the student threatens to send the dean a note that I a ignoring their serious question about the class. 

In the mean time, so far this today, I have replied to 24 emails from students asking for clarification or help on the take home portion of their final. 

I did reply at 713pm tonight. I told him that I was sorry that he was under the misperception that faculty were required to answer emails within 24 hours or even at all on weekends!  Had his question involved something on the test rather than why there were penalty points for failing to submit their work when there were more than 60 hours left before the deadline to submit the work.  They have already had their questions for 10 full days by last night, and still had 2 1/2 more days left to submit.  Why is there any excuse for it to be submitted late?


** Inter thread alert: My exam has been posted on Chegg by 2 students now!  Each exam has unique numbers.  IF we were in class, normally, then this would not be a take home test and they would have been given an abbreviated assignment and I would have graded each problem, line by line.  However, as each is different, and they have 12 total days to do the work,I  have instead asked questions About the problem....'What is the value for the hcange in revenue in Year 1" or What is the Depreciation Expense in Year 2?  What is the Cash Flow for year 3?  So if their answers are correct, and they should be with that much time to work the problems in excel, then they jsut answer them and i grade it faster in Blackboard.  Im hoping that this saves time.

[ergative]

I also to wait until Monday morning when students send emails that are not time-sensitive. In one case (long weekend) the student wrote to the program coordinator on Sunday after I didn't respond, and she was very stern with him for expecting me to answer emails on weekends. She also CCed me on her response. But here's the thing: it was a long weekend, and if the student hadn't written to the program coordinator I would indeed have completely forgotten about his email by Monday. In the end, I just responded first thing Monday morning with cheerful, helpful advice. But I do feel a bit bad that he got snarled at when if he had done the right thing and waited patiently until Monday he would not have gotten any response from me at all.

[Katrina Gulliver]

Just got my (anticipated) redundancy email. And I now have to attend an excruciating final meeting too. So yay.

[downer]

Just got my (anticipated) redundancy email. And I now have to attend an excruciating final meeting too. So yay.

Sorry to hear that. Sending out sympathy vibes.

[fishbrains]

Why the f*ck don't people put the day of the week in their questions or announcements for events? ARGGGGHHHH!!!!! How the hell am I supposed to know what July 21 is or what I'm doing that day? Tell me it's a Tuesday, and I can make a pretty good guess and might agree to come. Otherwise, I assume I'm busy and just skip past the email. 

I know this won't cure world hunger or anything, but dang-it-all . . .

[Katrina Gulliver]

Why the f*ck don't people put the day of the week in their questions or announcements for events? ARGGGGHHHH!!!!! How the hell am I supposed to know what July 21 is or what I'm doing that day? Tell me it's a Tuesday, and I can make a pretty good guess and might agree to come. Otherwise, I assume I'm busy and just skip past the email. 

Yep. And people who don't even specify WHERE their event is. Not such an issue now things are online, but I was constantly getting notices about a talk taking place in "LECTURE THEATRE 3", which didn't specify which university, or even which country, it was in.

[Katrina Gulliver]

Just got my (anticipated) redundancy email. And I now have to attend an excruciating final meeting too. So yay.

Sorry to hear that. Sending out sympathy vibes.

Thank you.

[the_geneticist]

Why the f*ck don't people put the day of the week in their questions or announcements for events? ARGGGGHHHH!!!!! How the hell am I supposed to know what July 21 is or what I'm doing that day? Tell me it's a Tuesday, and I can make a pretty good guess and might agree to come. Otherwise, I assume I'm busy and just skip past the email. 

Yep. And people who don't even specify WHERE their event is. Not such an issue now things are online, but I was constantly getting notices about a talk taking place in "LECTURE THEATRE 3", which didn't specify which university, or even which country, it was in.

Ooh!  Even better, we have some rooms that have an official number, but everyone calls by some weird nickname.  "Let's meet in the Basketweaving room".  Yeah, no one who works in other buildings on campus knows what you mean.  How about saying the building, floor, and room number?  Jeez. 

[FishProf]

We have the Hall of Dead Birds, but everyone seems to know of that place.

[mamselle]

Some campuses (well, I only know of one, but there may be more) only ever use numbers for buildings.

You're just supposed to know.

M.

[downer]

When I use Blackboard to calculate student grades, I get partlculary annoyed when they write at the end of the semester saying I made a mistake in the calculation. It would mean that I made a mistake in every student's grade. It's not impossible I suppose. I have in fact made mistakes in the past. So maybe it isn't totally unreasonable for them to ask me to check. But in nearly every case, they are the ones who have made a mistake in their calculation.

[Parasaurolophus]

When I use Blackboard to calculate student grades, I get partlculary annoyed when they write at the end of the semester saying I made a mistake in the calculation. It would mean that I made a mistake in every student's grade. It's not impossible I suppose. I have in fact made mistakes in the past. So maybe it isn't totally unreasonable for them to ask me to check. But in nearly every case, they are the ones who have made a mistake in their calculation.

Yeah, no kidding.  But BB/Moodle does occasionally have weird grade calculation SNAFUs for single grades (although last semester it fucked up an entire course of mine). I don't quite trust it.

[cathwen]

I've had Blackboard wrongly calculate an odd grade or two--although that hasn't happened for quite a few years now.  That is why I always enter grades into Excel to double-check.  It's a little more work, but at the end of the semester, I feel confident that the averages are correct.

[Vkw10]

Budget freeze, people! Absolutely no spending! Zero, zilch, not one penny! I've said that at least three times a week for the last month. The dean's said it at least once a week. The provost and president have said it, even if they did tack on "except for exceptional circumstances requiring VP level approval." So why do you keep submitting purchase requests?

The latest one was for several hundred dollars of miscellaneous supplies, including paper clips shaped like a treble clef and custom-printed sticky notes.

[mamselle]

Ooohhh...I'll take the paper clips....

M.