Office Hours
So, I'm teaching a class this semester, and the first paper is due Tuesday. So I held a few office hours, for the first time this semester. I thought, well, maybe I'll get a few students to come in and discuss the paper. Um, I was wrong. My sense is that more than half of the students in the course (enrollment 43) came to talk to me. At one point, I was literally surrounded by students worried about the paper. My sense was that this paper assignment, which is worth, I think 15% of their final grade, has really freaked the students out. Why? My guess: because it will be graded, and these students are really concerned about their grades.
I've seen grade-grubbing before, but this was at least an order of magnitude greater than what I've seen before.
I was discussing this with TMcD, and I offered him this twisted insight into my mind, as it stands now. So I'll share with all readers of this blog: At this point, I am so tired of the careerist, timid, afraid-to-take-risks mentality of the students today, that the students I like the best tend to be the ones who really don't take the schoolwork very seriously. Because there's little middle ground. Either students intensely care, today, but only for extrinsic reasons, or they really don't. (I'm leaving aside the students who actually don't care and don't do the work.) It's sort of refreshing to encounter a student who doesn't get too agitated about a minor assignment in one course. Almost as refreshing as the student who's actually interested in the material, and not just making sure that the argument they're making is close to "what I'm looking for."
Because, kids, I'm looking for brilliance, and if you have to ask, you're probably not there.
Final point: Student self-confidence is, at best, weakly correlated with ability. Have y'all noticed that?
posted by Number Three @ 3:01 PM
1 Comments:
Yes, the grade-grubbing of some for purely practical considerations makes a mockery of learning. I suppose universities get what they ask for by having grades be such a big issue. For me, the most annoying are the B students who really want an A. They're the ones who only come to office hours to improve a specific grade, not to discuss ideas. In fact, half the time they'll start with a comment such as "I really want/need an A on this paper..." I had one student ask me a question last quarter about her paper to which there was no simple, straitforward answer. So, I launched into an explanation and the student just interrupted me and said, "Just tell me how I can get an A on this paper." Grrrrrrrr.
As for student self-confidence and ability -- a very weak correlation. Often the students who are willing to talk in class don't do as well on the exams and vice versa. BUT, I like the students who are willing to take risks and talk about their ideas. Usually, they just don't have time (in a paper) to tease the idea out, but I give extra consideration for the attempt. Nothing worse than getting a paper which has 3 sources that are each merely paraphrased for about 1/3 of the paper and then stitched together so that the sutures show.
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