My personal favorite is the one that points out the face one makes "when the very first word of a student's essay is grammatically incorrect." The image is Neil Patrick Harris looking utterly and completely disappointed. He is looking down, shaking his head, voicing all of our frustrations as writing professors.
We have all been there. There's that student - the one who comes to office hours and who sends you emails at all times of the day and night, who then submits an essay that is grammatically weak, to say the least, does not follow any of the guidelines that you put on the assignment or went over in class, and is basically the work of a student who doesn't do any of the things previously mentioned. It's like he never listened to you in the first place, like he is coming to office hours to make up for the fact that during class time he is off in another world, or sleeping, or, apparently, temporarily deceased.
The fact is, regardless of all of our good intentions, sometimes students just don't listen. They don't do the reading and they don't talk in class. I stand in front of the blackboard, talking to myself in a room full of people, hoping that they remember to read the paper assignment before submitting an essay that makes me sad.
So, I learn to appreciate that great class full of students who do talk. They have done the reading and they have ideas, real ideas, about what the themes in that reading might be. They not only read the paper assignment, but they follow it to the letter, double spacing and using direct quotations from the text (formatted correctly in MLA). They, simply, do what they are supposed to do. And I look like this:
This semester, I have one of those classes. The students all seem to be friends. They come in and greet each other with enthusiasm. They start talking about the literature before class technically begins. They relate the literature to their own lives and they wonder out loud about what Thornton Wilder meant when he made Emily Webb go back in time to her 12th birthday. Their essay grades are not exemplary, but they follow my instructions. They listen. They may not be "A" students. Many of them are not even "B" students. But they come prepared for the work that college demands of them. And that, my friends, is worth all of the incorrect citations and ignored instructions in the world.
Do you think students at Ivy League schools make their professors sad in the same way? I wonder.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great question, Joli. I hope that if any Ivy League professors read this, they can shed some light on the subject, but I suspect that such disappointment sometimes comes with the profession.
ReplyDeleteI *live* for classes like this. They are far to rare, but they make my job so much more fun :)
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