Side note
Just a small warning: there are going to be feelings about teaching freshmen under the cut.
So it's an unusual thing to teach intro to writing to Freshmen. This is true for a number of reasons, but mostly for these three: (1) you are the only teacher that knows them by name, (2) you are trying to make them actually commit to critical thinking and you can't commit to critical thinking if you still think hard work is something only nerds and not cool people do, and (3) they think their shitload of crazy uber-emotional problems and problems with assignments are the same thing.
Freshmen are just plain different from other age groups in university. I know I was. They're lunatics, for one thing. They barely count as human. They do lunatic things all the time, all day long, every day, and they have no idea how lunatic they are. And I get to hear about all of is. Because I really can't get them to write a decent essay if they're not intellectually challenged by the topic they chose as well as emotionally invested. And I can't get them emotionally invested without diving into the black hole that is freshmen emotions. And I can't get them intellectually challenged without first convincing them that hard is not for losers, it's for everyone and there's no escaping it and you sometimes just have just do it.
All this put together leaves me in this situation: a permanent supple of tissues for the criers, some solid crisis management tactics, and a stack of the campus counseling service's brochures. That, and a shiton of crazy anecdotes.
I think they're a bit more lunatic than usual this semester. I have four students who are, like, allegorically bad, they're so bad. Like....if there was a Restoration play, you know, the kind where the cheating wife and her husband are Mr. and Mrs. Cuckold, these four would be the stand-ins for all the rest of fuck-uppery.
There's girl (1)...I call her Waterworks. Waterworks is unusually slow. I felt super bad for her for months because I thought she might have some sort of undiagnosed learning disability. Then I discovered the truth: she's pretty and has never had to search farther in the list of "what next?" options than number two or three because number three is crying and she's pretty. It didn't work on me--like I said, my office is stocked in tissues, and I have had legit criers before, the kind where you end up hugging them and walking them to counseling services and she was not like that. She was the kind who cries until it becomes apparent that nothing profitable was coming out of crying. And then she stopped. Like she had flipped a switch. Since then, she's been marginally better because I know how to phrase things to her: I have to stress the fact that effort is required. That's what she didn't get before. She thought "effort" meant typing words on a page. I constantly have to remind her that thinking is also involved.
Then there was boy (1). I gave an essay prompt out for the first essay and it said, "We're going to be talking a lot about Sherlock Holmes in class. Since you have to come up with an original thesis, you're not allowed to write about Sherlock Holmes. But if you were, here is an example of a strong thesis and a weak thesis..." This boy--you guessed it--wrote about Sherlock Holmes. But not just that. He used the example of the bad thesis. And I read all the rough drafts in that batch and I threw the book at him. I was so critical that his workshop group got a bit sour with me. And then he creepily followed me around the department for a day or two afterwards, agreeing with everything I ever said. AND THEN HANDED THE SAME DAMN ESSAY IN AS A FINAL DRAFT A WEEK LATER. And that's how he's been all semester. I catch him doing to lazy thing, he gets creepy, continues in lazy thing. Rinse and repeat.
And Girl (2). She asks for special consideration in every possible way and then does barely the bare minimum. And she hates me. She makes it apparent in every class, in every assignment, in every second of every interaction. It's like interacting with passiveaggressivenotes.com in human form.
And Boy (2). He thinks everyone else is stupid (especially me) and will be completely wowed by his native intelligence....so much so that he's proud of how little work he does. I keep telling him not to cut corners, that it's sort of necessary to think through what your paper is going to be about before you start in with the "Since the dawn of time, man has been..." bullshit. But no. When I meet with him, he makes it clear that I am jealous of his genius. Obviously. And then I correct his spelling. There are little red squiggly lines for this shit.
I also have six or seven remarkable students. Like....students I assumed were never going to rise above a B+ are getting straight A+. I don't even usually give A+, at any point in the semester. I gave five in the last batch of papers.
How can you end up with such turdmonsters and such dulcet darlings in the same group, picked at random from the incoming freshmen? How can a group of 18 freshmen be so very different and so very crazy? Why hasn't anyone convinced them that hard work is a good thing before? Why is it left to me to do that? And what if they hadn't had me this semester? What if they'd had that guy in my department who actually holds naptime during his classes? Or the girl who bakes cookies for her students until they inevitably think of her as some sort of modern-day servant? What if my big bad four had been in one of their classes instead of mine and had just never heard an argument in favor of trying hard at something and hoping you do well?
That's actually what scares me. I have had minority students from the inner city who, like me, grew up in a shitty public school system and has been per-determined to not do as well as privileged white kids from the suburbs. Actually, I love those kids. I never have to make the case for hard work to them. They know better than anyone else that a B+ you earned through hard work is better than an A someone gave you out of pity. I will spend a dozen hours a week in office hours with kids like that. I will devote weekends, evenings, late night e-mail flurries, tips of the trade, buy them textbooks, walk them to administrative help....I will go to any length for a kid like that. And I have done. I will do it again.
But these four this semester--they're everything I don't know how to fix. I can't fight blind vanity or utter apathy or contempt. I have nothing to combat that with. No argument works, no effort on my part helps. And that's so very disheartening.
I just have to keep thinking about those five or six surprise successes. I'm so proud of them that I could burst--until my eyes pass over one of the four problem kids and I sink right back into, "WHAT CAN I DO, I CAN'T DO ANYTHING."
Sorry. You don't hear from me for months and then the deluge of teaching Feelings. Those of you who teach know where I'm coming from, I know there are some of you out there.
So it's an unusual thing to teach intro to writing to Freshmen. This is true for a number of reasons, but mostly for these three: (1) you are the only teacher that knows them by name, (2) you are trying to make them actually commit to critical thinking and you can't commit to critical thinking if you still think hard work is something only nerds and not cool people do, and (3) they think their shitload of crazy uber-emotional problems and problems with assignments are the same thing.
Freshmen are just plain different from other age groups in university. I know I was. They're lunatics, for one thing. They barely count as human. They do lunatic things all the time, all day long, every day, and they have no idea how lunatic they are. And I get to hear about all of is. Because I really can't get them to write a decent essay if they're not intellectually challenged by the topic they chose as well as emotionally invested. And I can't get them emotionally invested without diving into the black hole that is freshmen emotions. And I can't get them intellectually challenged without first convincing them that hard is not for losers, it's for everyone and there's no escaping it and you sometimes just have just do it.
All this put together leaves me in this situation: a permanent supple of tissues for the criers, some solid crisis management tactics, and a stack of the campus counseling service's brochures. That, and a shiton of crazy anecdotes.
I think they're a bit more lunatic than usual this semester. I have four students who are, like, allegorically bad, they're so bad. Like....if there was a Restoration play, you know, the kind where the cheating wife and her husband are Mr. and Mrs. Cuckold, these four would be the stand-ins for all the rest of fuck-uppery.
There's girl (1)...I call her Waterworks. Waterworks is unusually slow. I felt super bad for her for months because I thought she might have some sort of undiagnosed learning disability. Then I discovered the truth: she's pretty and has never had to search farther in the list of "what next?" options than number two or three because number three is crying and she's pretty. It didn't work on me--like I said, my office is stocked in tissues, and I have had legit criers before, the kind where you end up hugging them and walking them to counseling services and she was not like that. She was the kind who cries until it becomes apparent that nothing profitable was coming out of crying. And then she stopped. Like she had flipped a switch. Since then, she's been marginally better because I know how to phrase things to her: I have to stress the fact that effort is required. That's what she didn't get before. She thought "effort" meant typing words on a page. I constantly have to remind her that thinking is also involved.
Then there was boy (1). I gave an essay prompt out for the first essay and it said, "We're going to be talking a lot about Sherlock Holmes in class. Since you have to come up with an original thesis, you're not allowed to write about Sherlock Holmes. But if you were, here is an example of a strong thesis and a weak thesis..." This boy--you guessed it--wrote about Sherlock Holmes. But not just that. He used the example of the bad thesis. And I read all the rough drafts in that batch and I threw the book at him. I was so critical that his workshop group got a bit sour with me. And then he creepily followed me around the department for a day or two afterwards, agreeing with everything I ever said. AND THEN HANDED THE SAME DAMN ESSAY IN AS A FINAL DRAFT A WEEK LATER. And that's how he's been all semester. I catch him doing to lazy thing, he gets creepy, continues in lazy thing. Rinse and repeat.
And Girl (2). She asks for special consideration in every possible way and then does barely the bare minimum. And she hates me. She makes it apparent in every class, in every assignment, in every second of every interaction. It's like interacting with passiveaggressivenotes.com in human form.
And Boy (2). He thinks everyone else is stupid (especially me) and will be completely wowed by his native intelligence....so much so that he's proud of how little work he does. I keep telling him not to cut corners, that it's sort of necessary to think through what your paper is going to be about before you start in with the "Since the dawn of time, man has been..." bullshit. But no. When I meet with him, he makes it clear that I am jealous of his genius. Obviously. And then I correct his spelling. There are little red squiggly lines for this shit.
I also have six or seven remarkable students. Like....students I assumed were never going to rise above a B+ are getting straight A+. I don't even usually give A+, at any point in the semester. I gave five in the last batch of papers.
How can you end up with such turdmonsters and such dulcet darlings in the same group, picked at random from the incoming freshmen? How can a group of 18 freshmen be so very different and so very crazy? Why hasn't anyone convinced them that hard work is a good thing before? Why is it left to me to do that? And what if they hadn't had me this semester? What if they'd had that guy in my department who actually holds naptime during his classes? Or the girl who bakes cookies for her students until they inevitably think of her as some sort of modern-day servant? What if my big bad four had been in one of their classes instead of mine and had just never heard an argument in favor of trying hard at something and hoping you do well?
That's actually what scares me. I have had minority students from the inner city who, like me, grew up in a shitty public school system and has been per-determined to not do as well as privileged white kids from the suburbs. Actually, I love those kids. I never have to make the case for hard work to them. They know better than anyone else that a B+ you earned through hard work is better than an A someone gave you out of pity. I will spend a dozen hours a week in office hours with kids like that. I will devote weekends, evenings, late night e-mail flurries, tips of the trade, buy them textbooks, walk them to administrative help....I will go to any length for a kid like that. And I have done. I will do it again.
But these four this semester--they're everything I don't know how to fix. I can't fight blind vanity or utter apathy or contempt. I have nothing to combat that with. No argument works, no effort on my part helps. And that's so very disheartening.
I just have to keep thinking about those five or six surprise successes. I'm so proud of them that I could burst--until my eyes pass over one of the four problem kids and I sink right back into, "WHAT CAN I DO, I CAN'T DO ANYTHING."
Sorry. You don't hear from me for months and then the deluge of teaching Feelings. Those of you who teach know where I'm coming from, I know there are some of you out there.