On Difficult Students

Earning a PhD usually includes some form of teaching along the way. I have been able to support myself through graduate school by working as a teaching assistant for the university. In exchange for teaching two courses a semester, I receive a tuition remission, a stipend and health insurance. This set up usually works in my favor, but sometimes teaching results in negative influences on my research.

In general, it has been a lot better to be a linguistics TA than a German TA research-wise. It takes way less effort to teach my linguistics courses well than introductory German classes. There's very little paper cutting, game making, grading and meetings involved teaching linguistics, whereas when I taught German at the university level, I spent 1-2 hours prepping for each hour in the classroom. I also enjoy that I don't have to proctor and grade 40 oral exams each semester. The drawbacks are I get to know my students less teaching linguistics and I have to be more creative to entertain my students while teaching something they're not really that interested in.

This year's teaching has been good for my Geraldine research. I teach two online courses and don't have to attend a lecture. I have missed the interaction with my students, but it has been a lot easier to tell students that I won't give them an extension when I've never met them to begin with.

When I taught high school, I thought that my students were good at creating excuses about missing assignments. They had a track meet/ play rehearsal/ forgot their book/ whatever. I knew their schedules and it was easy to tell when they were lying and it was easy to tell them no. I thought it would be the same at the university, but teaching adults is a completely different story. Adults have very different reasons for not completing their homework. Common excuses include work, roommates, trips to the ER, and family. Extreme excuses that I have received include:

Being held up at gun point and while having a laptop stolen, thus not being able to take the midterm, which had nothing to do with a laptop, computers, or was on the same day as the robbery

Being in jail

Deaths in the family (usually a parent)
Accidently shooting the family dog while hunting
Pregnancy
Divorce
Car accidents on the way to the final or midterm exam
Joining the army and leaving for bootcamp
Being in a national ultimate frisbee competition

Most students let me know about crazy circumstances ahead of time. I have a good relationship with my students and they know that I am happy to give them an extension if they need one, as long as they let me know AHEAD of time. If the gods weren't on their sides and they let me know after something was due (or when they get their final grade and want a higher one), I tell them "It sucks to be you" (only with nicer and more professional words).

Now that I teach online, I never get to meet my students. This means that a male 19 year old named Jamie who's on vacation in Hawaii can e-mail me with "I've been pregnant all semester and went into preterm labor. Between being in the NICU and trying to keep my job, I haven't been able to keep up with assignments. If I don't pass this class, I'll lose my financial aid and won't be able to pay rent. I'm a single mother."

"Does this really happen" you ask? Yes. And most of my students have an online presence that can inform me if they're lying. For example, "Jamie" has pictures of himself on the beach in Hawaii drinking beer, not of the cute new imaginary infant on his facebook page. But most of my students aren't that dumb, or creative, or imaginative. And most of my students just do their work to begin with. I only hear from them when they really, really, really want an A.

And today's dilemna? A student with a very long list of things that prevented completing assignments for the course including: death, divorce, hospitalization, children, no internet, unemployment and sick family members. Totally taken off guard by the litany of bad karma, I just forwarded the e-mail to my department chair and asked for guidance on how to best respond. I hope he comes up with something good. I have a dissertation to work on instead of feeling like a bad person for saying "I'm sorry, I don't accept late assignments."