Jogger v. the Whiny Student

Bear with me; this might be a long post.

I have blogged about this student before. He's been a pain in the ass all semester, because he's a uniquely irritating combination of outspoken and lazy. He never does any work, but he's quite willing to jump in and say "I don't understand what you are doing." Most student who ask for help that much are at least willing to work in between questions, and most student who do so little work are at least sensible enough to keep quiet about it.

So now we are exchanging e-mails on what his potential grade is. Here is his opening salvo...

I will be in tomorrow morning bright and early at 8am to go over my grade with you, and for us to come up with a plan together of how I can pass this class with a C. It is very, very important to me despite bombing the last exam. I want to finish the year with two 90s or better on the exams.

He didn't come in. I looked at his grades, and determined that two 90's on the remaining exams would bring him up to almost a D. I prepared what I thought was a reasonably level response.

The main thing that you have to do to get your grade up is to start working on the HW. It's too late for you to get a really good grade on that portion of the course, but every little bit helps. I truly believe that doing the HW will help you prepare for the exams. The exam questions aren't taken from the HW, but they cover the same ideas.

A C is a long shot at this point. There's just too much damage. However, if you perform well on the remaining exams, and get your HW and quiz scores up, you might pull off a D.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.

The original response was quite a bit snarkier, including a gripe about not showing up when he said he would. But I toned it down.

He came back with:

so you're telling me if I give it everything i've got and get an A on the final showing I know and understand all the covered material in the class, and get an A on the last exam I will still end up with a D? That just doesn't seem too fair to me because it should ultimately be about learning the material, not about how well you take tests in my opinion. Personally, I'm all for throwing the spreadsheet out, spending hours in the math lab and with you in your office hours learning the material and clearing up the conceptions, and finishing strong, deserving a C.

OK, now I'm starting to get mad. (This is a total lie. I've been mad at this guy for weeks. Now I'm starting to not care that he knows it.) I wrote a lengthy response, which I will resist the urge to quote in full. The two main points are (1) there's a lot of assessment that goes on that isn't covered on the final, and (2) I don't want to make a special exception to my grading scheme for someone who has done so little work. The last paragraph went:

The bottom line is that when the signals are flashing and the whistle is blowing, you can't blame the wreck on the train. You could have -- should have -- seen this coming all semester. I'm sorry that you didn't.

He's still not done. His response:

I guess this doesn't make a lot of sense to me because professors are supposed to want students to pass their classes....

I almost can't type because I can't see through the steam coming out of my ears. Here it is, my fault, because I don't want badly enough for the student to succeed.

My response:

No, professors are supposed to want students to learn the material. Passing and learning are related, but not identical. I do want you to learn this material, and I have serious doubts about your ability to do it well enough in the next month to earn a C.

[I give an explanation of just how deep a hole he is in.]

So it comes down to this: If you work hard and study your ass off, you might pull your average up to 58% or 59%. In that case, I will strongly consider giving you a D, rather than the F that the syllabus assigns. But the only way for you to get a C is for me to make major modifications to the grading scheme, and I'm not going to do that.

I know that your grade is important to you, and I'm not particularly anxious to make you take this course again. But you should start planning for what you are going to do if you earn an F or a D in this course, because those are really the only two serious possibilities.

No doubt he'll come back with even more whining.

So, why am I posting all this? Partly out of a sense of frustration. Partly so that someone will pat me on the back and say, "Poor baby. What a crummy student you have."

I hate to say it, but I really will enjoy giving him an F. That's pretty rare for me. Usually, I feel sorry for students who get F's, rather than anything else. But this guy has just gotten my goat. I just hope he manages to take the course with someone else some time in the future.

technorati tag: teaching-carnival