Odd Midterm
(Warning: complete lack of transitions follows. Sudden jumps from one subject to another, with absolutely no help whatsoever. Good luck, and may the force be with you.)
Mary! Picture of "Cul-de-sac," as requested:
Sam's very proud of this picture -- he had to drag the vest all around the house trying to find the correct slanting light (I mentioned before that the yarn choice (Lavold's "Silky Wool," in a nice heathery olive green) makes the cables Very Subtle; I wasn't joking), and finally ended up out on the deck, on account of the sun helpfully came up, and provided the slanting light that we weren't able to coax out of the lamps.
The buttons have fox heads on them, by the way -- I'm Very Fond of foxes. Have a big stash of these buttons that I found on eBay. I should have fox buttons to last me some years into the future.
The new stove is excellent and we are pleased. The directions encouraged us to run the self-cleaning oven cycle before we did anything else with it, in order to burn off the new oven smell, so we did, and luckily we did not asphyxiate the birds, and since we're in the warm snap, the house didn't freeze when we opened the windows to let the new stove smell out. It was a powerful new stove smell -- not nice, like a new car smell. You wouldn't want to live with it. But now it is gone, and all is well. Some of my buddies were disappointed because they thought I should have bought a red stove (this Means Something, but I do not want to find out what), instead of the off-white stove I chose. The last one was off-white, too. The next one, should I live long enough to get one, will also be off-white. If you have an off-white stove you don't really have to think much about your kitchen decor. If you have a red stove you have to think about your kitchen decor every morning, when it startles you.
But it's not really off-white; I tell a lie. The last stove wasn't really off-white, either; it was almond. This one, rather than being off-white, is -- what? French vanilla? Ecru? Clam chowder? Oh, Sam says it's "bisque." Well. There you are, then.
One of the nice things about teaching is that students never cease to surprise you. You can continue to learn and grow, till hell freezes over.
Last week in the Medieval Drama course, we had a midterm and papers were due. And there's a student in the class who's of the category that any professor reading this blog will recognize immediately -- the sort-of-no-show-who's-there-sometimes-but-not-mostly. Not the student who never shows up, and is just a ghost on the roster. That other one -- the student who actually appears occasionally for who knows what reason. Often one ends up at the end of the semester explaining to such people that no, there's no way they can make up the work they didn't do all semester. They're always, like, SO surprised.
I welcome these students. There aren't many of them. They're not bothering me. They make it look like I'm doing more work than I actually am. It is not difficult to grade work that doesn't show up. They often have very fine excuses. I find them amusing. They're in the middle of some Learning About Life Process, and I'm glad to help. (There were, very early in my own career, some very helpful professors who quietly and without fanfare flunked me for not doing my work. Thanks, guys. You helped save my life.)
But this guy is exhibiting behavior new to me. He emailed me the day before the paper was due, asking if he could have an extension on the paper, because he hadn't bought the book yet. Now, this is pretty funny, but it's not new. Well, I take that back. Actually admitting it to the professor is new. I told him that he could turn the paper in later, but I was going to send his name in on the midsemester "at risk" list, since technically he'd be flunking the class at that point. (Why do I allow the extension? Because I enjoy hearing the stories, and besides I most times don't see the papers anyway. I could shut down the process, but that wouldn't be nearly as interesting. I am an evil evil woman, I'm telling you.)
So, fine, nothing new here. But then we had the midterm. The set up was that, since it's a once-a-week class, we'd have the midterm for the first half, and then meet back in the classroom so that I could explain East Anglian Drama, and the students could have a restful but productive time. Learning about East Anglian Drama. Well, maybe you had to be there... anyway, he came to the midterm, and sat for 45 minutes with his little "blue book," and turned in his essays, and then disappeared and didn't come back. Also not new behavior.
But! It turns out that there is NOTHING written down in his blue book! Nothing! He wrote his name down, that's it.
Now, here's the part that's new to me: not showing up for class, common behavior. Not buying the book and reading the assignments, same old same old. Not writing the paper, boring. But showing up for the midterm and pretending to take it? What is that? And not even writing one of those scam essays that don't make it by the professor but at least you made a good faith attempt to run a con (you know, the answers that make it Very Clear that the only thing you know about the text is what you've found in the question itself*)! 45 minutes of his life he'll never get back, when he could have been home watching the tube!
Colleagues predict I won't see him again. I dunno. I think I might. I think he's some New Thing I haven't seen yet.
*Here's one (I'm making this up as I go, by the way; let's see if it works):
Question: What do you make of the passage in the N Town "Passion" play wherein Jesus is given the Host?
Answer: Medieval Drama was very important to the people because they couldn't read so they had a lot of passion. Although it was not in the Bible, the play from N where Jesus found a hotel room and a new disciple, the Host, taught the people that they could follow Jesus no matter what their job was. It is a good passage and I like it very much, because it teaches me that I can follow Jesus even if I work in a hotel.
Mary! Picture of "Cul-de-sac," as requested:
Sam's very proud of this picture -- he had to drag the vest all around the house trying to find the correct slanting light (I mentioned before that the yarn choice (Lavold's "Silky Wool," in a nice heathery olive green) makes the cables Very Subtle; I wasn't joking), and finally ended up out on the deck, on account of the sun helpfully came up, and provided the slanting light that we weren't able to coax out of the lamps.
The buttons have fox heads on them, by the way -- I'm Very Fond of foxes. Have a big stash of these buttons that I found on eBay. I should have fox buttons to last me some years into the future.
The new stove is excellent and we are pleased. The directions encouraged us to run the self-cleaning oven cycle before we did anything else with it, in order to burn off the new oven smell, so we did, and luckily we did not asphyxiate the birds, and since we're in the warm snap, the house didn't freeze when we opened the windows to let the new stove smell out. It was a powerful new stove smell -- not nice, like a new car smell. You wouldn't want to live with it. But now it is gone, and all is well. Some of my buddies were disappointed because they thought I should have bought a red stove (this Means Something, but I do not want to find out what), instead of the off-white stove I chose. The last one was off-white, too. The next one, should I live long enough to get one, will also be off-white. If you have an off-white stove you don't really have to think much about your kitchen decor. If you have a red stove you have to think about your kitchen decor every morning, when it startles you.
But it's not really off-white; I tell a lie. The last stove wasn't really off-white, either; it was almond. This one, rather than being off-white, is -- what? French vanilla? Ecru? Clam chowder? Oh, Sam says it's "bisque." Well. There you are, then.
One of the nice things about teaching is that students never cease to surprise you. You can continue to learn and grow, till hell freezes over.
Last week in the Medieval Drama course, we had a midterm and papers were due. And there's a student in the class who's of the category that any professor reading this blog will recognize immediately -- the sort-of-no-show-who's-there-sometimes-but-not-mostly. Not the student who never shows up, and is just a ghost on the roster. That other one -- the student who actually appears occasionally for who knows what reason. Often one ends up at the end of the semester explaining to such people that no, there's no way they can make up the work they didn't do all semester. They're always, like, SO surprised.
I welcome these students. There aren't many of them. They're not bothering me. They make it look like I'm doing more work than I actually am. It is not difficult to grade work that doesn't show up. They often have very fine excuses. I find them amusing. They're in the middle of some Learning About Life Process, and I'm glad to help. (There were, very early in my own career, some very helpful professors who quietly and without fanfare flunked me for not doing my work. Thanks, guys. You helped save my life.)
But this guy is exhibiting behavior new to me. He emailed me the day before the paper was due, asking if he could have an extension on the paper, because he hadn't bought the book yet. Now, this is pretty funny, but it's not new. Well, I take that back. Actually admitting it to the professor is new. I told him that he could turn the paper in later, but I was going to send his name in on the midsemester "at risk" list, since technically he'd be flunking the class at that point. (Why do I allow the extension? Because I enjoy hearing the stories, and besides I most times don't see the papers anyway. I could shut down the process, but that wouldn't be nearly as interesting. I am an evil evil woman, I'm telling you.)
So, fine, nothing new here. But then we had the midterm. The set up was that, since it's a once-a-week class, we'd have the midterm for the first half, and then meet back in the classroom so that I could explain East Anglian Drama, and the students could have a restful but productive time. Learning about East Anglian Drama. Well, maybe you had to be there... anyway, he came to the midterm, and sat for 45 minutes with his little "blue book," and turned in his essays, and then disappeared and didn't come back. Also not new behavior.
But! It turns out that there is NOTHING written down in his blue book! Nothing! He wrote his name down, that's it.
Now, here's the part that's new to me: not showing up for class, common behavior. Not buying the book and reading the assignments, same old same old. Not writing the paper, boring. But showing up for the midterm and pretending to take it? What is that? And not even writing one of those scam essays that don't make it by the professor but at least you made a good faith attempt to run a con (you know, the answers that make it Very Clear that the only thing you know about the text is what you've found in the question itself*)! 45 minutes of his life he'll never get back, when he could have been home watching the tube!
Colleagues predict I won't see him again. I dunno. I think I might. I think he's some New Thing I haven't seen yet.
*Here's one (I'm making this up as I go, by the way; let's see if it works):
Question: What do you make of the passage in the N Town "Passion" play wherein Jesus is given the Host?
Answer: Medieval Drama was very important to the people because they couldn't read so they had a lot of passion. Although it was not in the Bible, the play from N where Jesus found a hotel room and a new disciple, the Host, taught the people that they could follow Jesus no matter what their job was. It is a good passage and I like it very much, because it teaches me that I can follow Jesus even if I work in a hotel.
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