I'm one semester back into academic pursuits, and I have to be honest. It's hard. But I feel like I'm a much better student than I've ever been before. Some of that I feel like I owe to the fact that I spent 3 years on the other side of higher education, trudging through the trenches of freshmen composition. Now being back to the studious side, I've been thinking a lot about how being a teacher for 3 years has influenced my behavior/beliefs/feelings about being a student.
1. There is a point to that assignment, even if you don't think there is. Sometimes, instructors will assign what students think of as "busy work", when in fact, there is actually a point to it. Just because it's not immediately apparent to a student doesn't mean there isn't a valuable lesson or important information to be gleaned from it.
2. Packing up your bag a leaving while someone is still talking is about the rudest thing in the world. I have to admit, I was guilty of this. As soon as it seemed like a class was starting to wrap up, I would start putting away my books and notebooks, put my jacket on, whatever. When one person does it, it's not so bad. When one person starts to do it and then 20-30 other people do too, it's deafening. It's even worse even people start standing up and pushing it chairs or heading to the door. SIT YOUR ASS DOWN. You can leave when the instructor says you can leave.
2.5 Instructors need to do their damnedest to get students out on time. I know 50 minutes can be a super short time period. It can seem almost negligible when an instructor is covering something really important. However, instructors need to be aware that students often have things scheduled back to back, and that 10 minutes between classes is needed to get from one side of campus to another for class, work, meeting, etc. So if I get up after you've already gone 10 minutes past the designated end time, it's not because you're not interesting. It's because I need to be in a meeting pretty much now.
3. If an instructor gives you the option of turning an assignment in early and getting feedback before submitting a final draft, DO IT. If you don't, you're a moron. Your instructor is offering to take very valuable time out of his/her day to read and respond to your work. To tell you exactly where your project/paper does not meet the assignment requirements, where you can improve, or if they're looking for something else. Why would you not do this? It just boggles my mind. The instructor is basically saying, "Turn something in and I'll tell you how to get an A." If you don't do this, and then complain later about not understanding why you got the grade you did, you're an even bigger moron than I thought.
4. In the classroom, the instructor's word is law. You don't always have to like what your teachers tell you to do. But you still have to do it. Their classroom, their rules. Don't like it? Drop the class. Can't drop the course? Suck it up and start acting like the adult you're supposed to be.
5. As hard as it can be sometimes, you need to be patient waiting for graded assignments to come back (unless it's completely unreasonable. It was not uncommon when I was teaching for me to hear students ask the class period after they turned in a major assignment if I'd finished grading them yet. Um. NO. Grading is hard work. And if an instructor does it right, it takes time. Especially with major assignments, or subjective assignments like writing or reports, where there aren't necessarily "right" answers. I always tried to get papers turned back to students within one week of submission. But when you're teaching 4 classes, of 20 students each, and they all turn in 10 page papers on one day? That's a lot of grading. And you can only grade so much in one day before you have to stop or risk doing a disservice to your student or being unfair. So yes, as students we are eager to get our grades back, especially at the end of a term. And as teachers, we're eager to give them back. (Trust me. The thought of dragging grading out longer than necessary is torturous.)
6. It's alright to ask for clarification of why you received a certain grade on an assignment or for the course. It is not alright to be a whiny little bitch. Sometimes, instructors make calculation errors. Sometimes, they overlook things. And sometimes, a grade gets entered incorrectly. Sometimes though, you're wrong, and you did deserve the grade you got, and you'll have to accept that. If you go talk to an instructor about a grade concern you should address as simply that: A concern about your grade. Not a You-Better-Give-Me-The-Grade-I-Want regardless of whether you've earned it. I know from my own experience that after a conversation with a student during which there has not been a mistake or misunderstanding but the student simply earned a poor grade, but the student came to me calmly, discussed the problem openly and without assigning blame or being a drama queen, I am often much more willing to work with said student to allow him/her to redo the assignment, do a make-up assignment, or something else to allow the student to recoup some of the lost points. But if you go into an instructor's office, guns blazing, screaming and pissed and acting like a petty, entitled little prick: Good luck getting that instructor to ever, EVER be willing to work with you again. EVER. You'd better hope you don't have to have that instructor in class again. Because he/she will remember you.
7. Most instructors really do want to facilitate your learning process, so if they ask for your input on any part of the classroom experience, they really do want it. I used to do this in some ways. I taught writing, and as part of the writing process, for every major essay, students' papers went through a peer review process. At the beginning of the semster I would often do an informal discussion about their peer review experiences in the past. What did they like/dislike? What kind of peer review had they tried (verbal, written, group, anonymous, etc.)? I would take their responses and experience in to account, and try to do a variety of types to include ones that have worked well for a majority of the class or ones they had not been exposed to before. But guess what? If you don't answer the question, then your preferences don't matter. Generally, your instructors want you to succeed, and they want to do whatever they can, in and outside the classroom, to get you where you want to be. Be willing to collaborate a little to get yourself there.
Man I'm on a roll. This blog could probably go on forever, because there are so many things I really should have known when I was doing my BA (and to some extent, my MA). But it's getting late and this is already pretty long. So TBC, maybe. G'night folks. Happy studying for those in or getting ready for finals. And happy grading for those of you about to collect 80-120 papers in one week. Cheers!
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