Blackjack and the End of the Semester

I finished this shawl (Blackjack by Romi Hill) a couple of weeks ago, but it took me a while to block it and then photograph it. There are glass beads at intervals along the bottom edge that make it hang nicely. I made an obvious error in the middle just above the area in this photo (it looks like the yo's are stacked instead of alternating) and I didn't get the bind off coordinated correctly with bead placement. Still, I think it's all right and I'm happy to have finished it after having the yarn and pattern in stash for something like four years.

On today's homework, my students struggled to write an acid dissociation equilibrium. This was something from last semester (and actually from before that). One wrote the reverse of Kb, another must have written and erased a bunch of times because the paper is all soft and fuzzy (but still wrote a Kb equation). All we did in class this morning (our last lecture period) was a quiz. I haven't looked at the papers yet, but nobody finished in less than 45 minutes. Most students took an hour. I fear it will be ugly.

The second-worst class ever.

This is a photo of a ball of yarn because I am wishing I could be at home, sitting next to it, knitting.

This semester, I have the second-worst class I have ever had. The worst was several years ago. I had recently become chairperson of the department and we were in the habit of offering one evening class for general education each term. Usually an adjunct taught it, but our regular adjunct had decided to take another job and moved away three weeks before the class was to start. The class was scheduled with an accelerated format that began halfway through the normal term, so all the potential instructors I contacted were unavailable. None of my colleagues could, or wanted to, take this on. There were 24 students registered, so it was fully subscribed, and I felt it would be not nice to cancel such a full class. In the end, I decided it was my duty, as chair, to teach the class.

I had three weeks to plan the class, working on it while teaching my usual schedule as always. I put as much thought into it as I could: planned what I thought would be interesting and novel lab experiences for the students, considered the likely backgrounds of the students (all non-science majors taking the course to fulfill the dreaded lab science requirement), and prepared texts and assignments that I hoped would allow them to appreciate some of what I love about chemistry. It wasn't the best class I had ever designed, but I thought it would be satisfactory and maybe even good. I was hopeful.

Nope. From the first night, the students seemed shocked that I expected them to actually pay attention, do the homework, and show understanding of the topics. Some of them did not come to class with paper to take notes. Some flipped helplessly through the text instead of making eye contact with me. After the two-hours of lecture we took a ten minute break and then reconvened in the lab. Some students would show up for the beginning of lab and then sneak out when my back was turned. Did they really think I wouldn't notice? The rest would do the absolute minimum work as fast as possible and then leave, sometimes less than half an hour after we'd started.

As the weeks progressed, a few students became a little hostile. They would answer questions I posed with a defiant "I don't know" and then just stare at me. I discovered two young men were copying each other's lab reports (so they could take turns skipping the lab time) and I kicked them both out of the class which did not improve morale for the others. Anyway, I was disappointed and frustrated, but I had a full schedule of other courses to teach so I tried to do the best I could with the time I had. Ever since, I have described this class as my worst-ever. And my department has never again offered that course in the accelerated, evening format.

Well, my current class is causing almost as much unhappiness. This is a class I regularly teach every year. It is required for our majors and it occasionally attracts some others. Students take it as juniors or seniors, so they normally have two or three years of background in chemistry and I expect them to use it. The group I have this year is terrible. So terrible that I don't know how they managed to become juniors and seniors in this major. I now wish that I had been documenting all of the ridiculous things that have happened since we started in January. I suspected that I would have some problems with one or two of the students, based on having them in a previous class, but I boggle at the scale of things. Example: in class one day, not one of the students knew how to convert between two SI units. This is taught in the very first week of the very first course in our major, and it is used frequently thereafter in all courses.

The straw that broke the camel's back happened in lab. We were performing an analysis of lead in samples of brass and each student needed to clean and weigh one piece of lead (as a standard). In my announcements at the start of the period, I said as clearly as possible that each person should take one piece of lead, but I noticed that most of the students had actually taken more. All right, I thought, it might be difficult to transfer a single tiny piece of metal from a small bottle into a beaker. We'll just collect all of that extra at the end. It may be indicative of how the first 14 weeks of the semester have gone that I wasn't even very upset that they had disregarded my direct, specific instructions. Next, each student weighed their single pieces of metal and took them into another lab for the analysis. I went with them to help set things up and describe what was going on. As each student finished, he or she went back into the first lab and thus I was the last person to return. Upon entering the original lab, I said to the group, "Who has leftover lead for disposal?" The student closest to me looked up and answered, "Oh, we threw it in the trash."

I definitely lost my cool. Did you not just write a risk assessment while preparing for this lab experiment in which you all wrote that lead is toxic and harmful to the environment and should always be collected for proper disposal?!? Yes, they did. Why then did you think it was all right to throw the lead into the trash? Because G. [one of the students] said it was OK.  What?!?!?!?!?

At this point, I mentally flashed to a recurring conversation I've had with a colleague from another department. We sort-of-but-not-really joke that there are certain things that should be grounds for automatic failure in some courses. I am standing in my lab, listening a student say something incredibly stupid, and I'm actually thinking: you all just failed this class - get out of here right now. But of course I didn't say that out loud. I was the most speechless I have ever been. I'm a little surprised I didn't faint dead away.

Since that lab, I'm just counting the days until the end of the semester. There is nothing that can salvage this one.

Keep Your Boots On, It's Still Not Spring

Well, unless spring has winter storm warnings full of ice, snow, and sleet.

Yesterday I fell asleep on my sofa after dinner. I meant to keep plugging on my current sock and use-up-old-stash projects when I sat down. Instead, I read a bit and then I felt cold and my feet hurt so I curled up under the blanket. The next thing I knew, the noise of H coming home from work woke me.

I am reading Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher. It's a book of recommendation letters (an "epistolary novel" I'm told) allegedly written by a middle-aged English professor at a second-tier American university on behalf of students, colleagues, and friends. This professor fills his letters with asides referencing his relationship with the intended recipient, unflattering details about the people he is supposed to be recommending, complaints about working conditions in his office, and melodramatic sobbing about how poorly regarded the English department is on his campus. I'm reading it because H read it last year and laughed his head off. I don't like it. I was hoping for humor, but I'm simply disgusted with Professor Fitger. I find him conceited and whiny. I want him to get over his divorce, his lack of book sales, and his enmity of the Economics department and do something productive.

The letters I do like are the ones in which he rails against the increasingly impersonal, online recommendation format (maybe because I've had to complete those awful tables of check boxes, too). I also enjoy the occasionally clever phrasing he uses, for example, when describing a student he has known for "eleven minutes."

I think the plight of the underappreciated English professor is nothing new in books. Writers write what they know (so I've heard, anyway), and I guess many of them are English professors struggling with feelings of inadequacy. If I had any belief that I could write a novel I would be tempted to write one about a university where the exalted English professors regularly proclaim their undeniably accurate understanding of politics at near-campus watering-holes, preach 19th century British literature to classes of adoring fans, and spend breaks traveling to sunny villas with suitcases packed with bottles of wine. They sometimes deign to marvel at scientific news then proudly state their pure white ignorance of science and math. Maybe I'm just jealous.

The End Is Near

The end of the semester is near, and it seems to have struck people between the eyes this week. At the end of first semester, in December, I know I feel overwhelmed, too, but there is also a sense of relief that there will be a break and a chance to relax. Maybe there's also a sense of excitement, anticipation for the start of second semester. But in April, at least this year, the approaching end feels heavy and unpleasant to me.

Last week I caught two plagiarists on two different assignments. I am certain that neither of them was trying to deceive, or slip anything past me, or cut corners. They each made mistakes, unfortunately. Mistakes that they should have known better than to make and should have been able to avoid. My first reaction, was sadness. Sometimes when I catch a cheater, I do feel a little victory. Like I'm doing a good thing. In these two cases I immediately wished I could unsee the evidence and never look at it again.

The first student is having some personal problems outside of school, and maybe ze made this mistake because zir thoughts were focused on other things. Ze was upset to tears by our conversation, and after ze left my office I was not able to do any meaningful work for the rest of the day. Ze seemed to understand the problem as soon as I explained it and accepted the penalty without much comment. Since my job is to help students learn, I advised Student #1 to look over the next assignment (which had already been turned in) and make sure the same mistakes did not occur there. I allowed the student to use the weekend to check, accepting the assignment late without further penalty, because a second offense would automatically result in failing the course, and I don't want that.

The second student is typically slow to grasp things, and was slow to catch on how serious the situation could be. This student kept talking about fixing the mistake, as if ze thought I could allow a re-do to just make it all go away. Ze spent the last several days visiting various support offices on campus and revising the assignment. Today, Student #2 described all of this work to me and then stated that it should (somehow) counteract the original mistake. That I should be eager to read this work and restore the points. This demonstrates the complete misunderstanding that has taken place. Ze does not recognize the great fortune in not having already failed the course for this.

All of this takes so much energy to deal with. To be calm and professional. To remain so when the students are weeping, or being exasperating, ungrateful, or angry. Afterwards, to review these interactions repeatedly in my mind, checking whether I could have said something better or handled the situation in a different way. Only three more weeks, we say among ourselves. The end of the semester is in sight. Hold on just a little longer. We have done it before, and we will do it again.