Student: When are your office hours? I would like to discuss my grade.
WotC: I can't fucking believe I have literally announced my office hours at the start and end of every fucking class for the last 5 fucking classes and you actually just fucking asked me this, but ok, they are W, X, Y & Z. But if you just want to discuss your grade, that's not something that requires office hours, we can do it via e-mail. I'll go first: What I like about your grade is that it's a 2 digit prime number, both digits of which are also prime. What I don't like about it is that neither digit is a 7. I think it would have been so much cooler if one of the digits was a 7. Ok, that's enough from me, your turn. What are your thoughts about your grade? I love discussions, don't you?
Just when I needed cheering up. Thanks, WoTC!
ReplyDeleteYeah, that drives me bat guano insane too. I put the hours in the syllabus and on a sign outside my office door. They can't/won't read.
ReplyDelete"Discuss" your grade? Your grade is based on where you stand in the class distribution. In golf, the worst finisher is said to be "DFL", for Dead F---ing Last. That's where you are. I'd say do the math on this, but you clearly can't.
Hmmm. A 53?
ReplyDeleteOr 31, 23, or 13. Fun game!
ReplyDeleteBased on what I'm seeing this semester in most of my classes, I'm guessing 23 (mostly since technically 1 isn't prime).
DeleteYou're right. Oops.
DeleteUgh, I got an email a few days ago "Hello, I'm emailing you about my work."
ReplyDeleteThat was it.
You could respond "Hello, I'm emailing about your email." And that will start an eternal loop that can never be broken.
DeleteI think I've gotten too tolerant. I just send back the office hours these days, and I'd probably actually reply to the "Hello, I'm emailing you about my work" email with something along the lines of "I got this, and it didn't seem to be complete. Could you resend, please?"
DeleteI haven't got the energy to be sarcastic (possibly good) or, perhaps, to enforce standards (definitely bad).
I needed this so bad. Halfway through I was thinking, he has a 77 what's the problem? Such a good story.
ReplyDeleteBut 77 isn't a prime. I'm with Uggy: 13, 23, 31, and 53 are the choices. Also 11. Although if we're disqualifying 1, per Pat, that leaves us with 23 and 53. Kid's SOL no matter what.
DeleteAnd I agree with Wombat that 7 is cool.
My students don't even know what prime numbers are, and if you explain, they can't understand. They simply can’t remember the beginning of the explanation long enough to understand the end of the explanation.
ReplyDeleteI have given up trying to explain special relativity, other than, “Time slows down at speeds approaching the speed of light.” I have completely given up trying to explain the difference between voltage and current. I am now considering the same for significant digits.
Memory is an important component of intelligence. I’ve been asked when my office hours are so many times now, and so often, I now take from granted that students can't remember when my office hours are, in any case whatsoever. So, I just tell them, over and over and over again. But then, that memory is an important component of intelligence was thrown into sharp relief by the physics grad student who'd taken a whole course on the Solar System, and yet still couldn't list the planets in order outward from the Sun.
I don't expect my students to remember when my office hours are (heck, I'm not sure I'd remember them if they weren't part of my regular weekly routine). I do expect them to remember that they can find my office hours at the top of the syllabus. Maybe that's a distinction without a difference, but I don't think so.
DeleteAnd I do agree that being able to retain information from the beginning of an explanation is essential to understanding the end of the explanation (and I suspect all that comes under short-term memory, which is a somewhat different beast, as well as concentration/attention, which is probably the key beast in this situation).
Significant digits! So we have this thing we give our students, and they assign values between 1 (I weep and gnash teeth!) and 5 (I have daily spontaneous brain orgasms!). We are in pretty good shape, I'm told, because we went from 4.22 to 4.28 on one of them. This survey, btw, went to about twenty students. What follows is me trying to explain significant digits and statistical significance to Deans. "But look, the numbers went up!" me: "Those numbers are essentially decorations." them: "But they went up!" God fucking forbid that they ever, ever go down!
DeleteNever mind that these numbers were based on the opinions of teenagers in the first place. These people ought to work for the White House. One reason for this is that the White House is far from here.
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