Thursday, May 25, 2017

"Need to..."


Sorry, just a speedy.

Can we just agree to crush any advisor who comes into a faculty office and starts with: "Lauren needs to get a B in your course"?

Yeah, well Lauren needs to turn in some work. Now you need to leave.


6 comments:

  1. You had me by the 14th word.

    (Without coffee, it would have been the 8th!)

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  2. Once had a dean call me wanting to get a whole train load of students passed. Now that i'm the grumpy old man of my department, they know better.

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  3. This is why we have pepper spray....

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  4. We really should be allowed to have a Taser.

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  5. Unless that statement is followed by something like "in order to avoid academic probation, but that seems unlikely, so I'm wondering whether she should drop your course and concentrate on those closer to her intended major, or keep trying in hopes that she can at least pull off a C and complete a core requirement," yes.

    Once again, I'm reminded that I work for a fairly functional place, as demonstrated by the fact that the only person likely to make this sort of argument to me is Lauren (and I'm perfectly free to point out, as kindly as possible, that she hasn't earned a B, that her need to balance out an anticipated D in a class essential to her major, or any other factor other than the work I've seen from her so far, isn't really germane to the discussion).

    And yes, I've had an email exchange this week with a student who really "needs" a B of some sort to bolster hir hopes of med school admission, but had a C- average in my class (which I boosted to C because it really was close, hir final project was strong, (s)he'd had some health issues this semester, and a C counts for graduation credit while a C- doesn't. But C-s don't magically turn into Bs or even B-s just because students "need" them to).

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