I was chatting with my best friend about how much I detest grading papers that are overwritten. I shared an example of a student’s paper whose first sentence was 3 lines long and contained 4 words with 5 syllables and 3 words with 4 syllables. What I actually said to her was: ‘It’s like she took an idea and beat it to death for the next 10 pages.’ My friend responded: ‘that’s a hate crime against professors.’ And it is. So I thought of other things students do that constitute hate crimes (because we hate it).
10. Saying you will come to office hours and then not showing. We have office hours because we are supposed to. BUT if we know students are not going to come to office hours, we spend that time working on other things. If a student happens to come, then we stop and speak with the student. If you tell me you are coming, I plan my office hours accordingly. When you don’t show, I want to require you to attend an event I know was canceled.
9. Using a laptop or cell phone during class. Uhmm hello…I have eyes. I can see that you are off task because you are staring at your crotch or smiling at your computer screen. Nothing about self-efficacy theory evokes thoughts of masturbation or girlish giggles. Put that crap away.
8. Being sick and touching everything in my office. Look, you’re lucky I let you come into my office with your hacking, sniffling, sneezing, heavy breathing self. Please do me the courtesy of NOT touching every item within reach. Just sit there—preferably while wearing a mask and gloves—and listen to what I’m saying. Then leave promptly so I can disinfect everything before the germs take root.
7. Asking for extra credit. This is not middle school. You don’t have get out of jail free cards in college. If you didn’t do the assignment correctly the first time, why would you magically be able to do it now? No. I am not grading extra work because you chose not to follow directions. Please move on. And don’t pass Go, and don’t collect $200.
6. Sending emails after 8pm and expecting a response. You don’t respond to ANY email I send no matter what the time so why should I be expected to respond to your 11.29pm request for help with the paper due in 8 hours? If you send me another email that late at night, I’m going to send you a virus.
5. Plagiarism. This is just plain foolhardy. The same way you searched the internet for terrible things to copy, we can search the internet and find what awful document you copied. But most of the time, we don’t even have to do that. When you include sentences like ‘I use this term in the sense in which it is used in cybernetics, that is, in the sense of processes with feedback and with feedforward, of processes which regulate themselves by a progressive compensations of systems.”, I know you are plagiarizing Piaget. What the hell is cybernetics? You don’t know do you? Because you aren’t an engineer. And neither am I. The jig is up.
4. Asking for handouts for missed classes. YOU missed class. I was there. Why should I go out of my way to catch you up because you decided to go to your cousin’s best friend’s brother’s wedding in Oregon? I didn’t get an invitation to the wedding and you aren’t getting the handouts from class. See how it feels to be left out?
3. Unprofessional emails. If we have never met, please don’t address me by my first name. Because you are not my personal friend, you have no clue if I am married or not. Please do not default to Mrs. because I am a woman. Though you don’t know my age, it is safe to assume that I am not your peer; therefore, please do not type your email as if I am your bff and we lol 2gether. I don’t care if YOLO. This is a place of business. Use proper diction and complete sentences. Which leads me to….
2. Poorly written papers. This includes lack of organization, poor grammar, awful spelling, too short and too long papers, incorrectly formatted papers, off topic papers, papers you submitted in your last class with me, papers you submitted in my colleague’s class, hastily written, and poorly researched papers. If I have to read one more essay that begins ‘Since the beginning of time, man has…’ I am going to drop kick someone in the throat.
And the most offensive hate crime is….
1. Asking questions whose answers are ON THE SYLLABUS! I didn’t write that for my health. I wrote it so I wouldn’t have to tell 20 students individually where my office is, my office hours, when assignments are due, how many points assignments are worth, what the required texts are, the grading scale, attendance policy, or that I don’t accept late work. For the love of God, READ THE SYLLABUS!
I will keep this in all of my class binders.
May I add number 11? Asking “Did I miss anything important?” after an absence. Uh, no. We just sat around twiddling our thumbs for 50 minutes. Of course, you missed something important!
OMFG yes! I just got my umpteenth email this term from a student missing a class asking if they missed anything important, and if I could catch them up (in addition to the nicely detailed lectures slides that I post online). RAWR!
Can I have an extension on the paper that is due in your class? I have other papers due the same time and I really want to do a good job on your paper!
I am not a professor but that is so awesome and so true!!! Those students then grow up and go to organizational meeting with me. But 1 thing about the syllabus. More than 1/2 the professors I had handed out the syllabus and then did something completely different regarding homework, homework collection or grading. As a former student I remind all professors, you are writing the syllabus write what you actually want to do;).
You are so right. Professors need to adhere to their own policies. At my institution, we view syllabi as a contract between the students and the professor. If either party violates, the contract becomes null. It’s one of the reasons why I love that at my school we often rewrite the syllabus with our students on the first day of class so that they can have input into the contract.
another favorite: “How many points do I need to pass?” or “How many pages/paragraphs does it have to be?” etc.
Whatever happened to doing the best you can, rather than the barest minimum required to pass?
[...] The top ten crimes (I won’t categorize them as hate crimes because that requires the perpetrators to actually have intent) against professors: [...]
This semester I received 3 new students during the 3rd week of the semester, and 2 in the fourth week. In an accelerated class.
“Can you please email me the assignments I missed?” Um, you mean all 8 of them? No.
“I feel totally lost, can I come to your office hours so you can help me with what you guys have covered?” Um, you mean give you a private lesson covering 8 hours of class? No.
“I’m worried I’m going to drown in the class.” Um, you mean you realize the horrible judgment that lead you to add a foreign language class that covers two semesters of material in one, in the 3rd week of class? Here’s one floaty wing. Good luck.
THANK YOU FOR THIS BLOG, IT IS PRICELESS. My office mates and I totes lol’d 2gether.
My favorite: “Is the test hard.” My answer: “I don’t know. I took it myself this morning and only missed two!” The looks on their faces are priceless.
Does university policy allow them to add that late? If so, you must allow them to make up the work, given that they didn’t “miss” it. FYI, you also cannot count the days they were not enrolled as absences. Should you continue to violate this very common university policy, I would expect students to complain often about you…as well they should. I also question the professionalism of a “professor” who actually types “totes lol’d” without a hint of irony.
I was a professor for 30 years. Certainly most of these things happened to me and most of them irritated me, but I honestly don’t care for the tone of this piece.
Students are young – they’re just learning appropriate behavior. I’d blame helicopter parents and their prior education – AND OTHER PROFESSORS AT YOUR INSTITUTION – more than the students.
I was pretty firm about most of these things – but you ARE there to help – including helping them to learn about appropriate expectations of adults.
And….we professors aren’t exactly perfect either. Think about THEIR list of the ways we irritate THEM. In my experience, many, MANY student complaints are legitimate. I presume the author is not perfect, so why should she be so condemnatory toward her students’ imperfections? At least they ARE young – what’s our excuse?
And I’ve certainly heard professors ask questions ALL THE TIME about items that were included in materials we’d been sent. Weren’t WE supposed to read them? Are our excuses really any more worthy than the ones our students have?
Maybe I’m way off here – but this just has such a nasty undertone to me. A little more humor, compassion, humility is in order, I think. All of us humans fail all the time. I have NO PROBEM with a teacher being strict; I was pretty hard-nosed myself. But great teachers are always BOTH demanding and nurturing. I find the latter lacking here.
For what it’s worth, I simply disagree with # 10. I NEVER regarded a student’s statement that s/he was coming to office hours as a commitment. If that is your expectation, I think you should tell the student that. A separate appointment outside of office hours – yes, that is a commitment and should be kept. Further, I never really planned my office hours one way or another based on whether I expected a particular student to come by. And…with regard to #4 – I will point out that people (yes, including professors) ask ALL THE TIME for “handouts” they missed from the last committee meeting, etc. If your handouts are posted on a web page or something (which I certainly think they should be) – why not just remind the student of that?
Thank you for reading this post and taking the time to respond. It is unfortunate that you found this post to be ‘nasty’ when most of the readers got that this post was written in jest. In fact, many students have commented on the veracity of these statements and understand that I am not condemning students nor saying that professors don’t do the same. However, I would like to be clear that I do find it annoying and unacceptable when students (or anyone) do these things. As a teacher, I am not solely here to relay content to students. In fact, I see my larger responsibility as cultivating proper learning behaviors and a sense of professionalism. Yes, these students are ‘young’ (although I find it hard to use that as an excuse. I graduated college at 20 and was for more professional than many of my 22 year old students. In how many other countries do we excuse the behavior of 20 year olds because of their age? For that matter, why doesn’t the law do the same?), but they will soon be members of our workforce. Should they not experience being held accountable for their actions and responsible for their committments now? I do not blame parents or other professors. I put blame solely where it lies: with the individual. Their parents are not telling them to not show up at office hours when they’ve emailed saying they were coming at a specified time. Their other professors are not encouraging them to skip class and then ask the professor to have a private lesson with them to ‘catch them up’ (or maybe professors are doing that when they enable such behavior by providing handouts for missed classes). No, I am not here to baby my students and cover up for them when they have made poor decisions to skip class, not ask questions, not attend scheduled meetings, cheat on assignments, or anything else we’ve deemed ‘mistakes of the young’. The real world does not care about your age. And neither do I. You managed to get yourself into an elite private college. It is their responsibility to do what it takes to stay there. It is my responsibility to help them learn how to do so.