Interesting

First interesting moment of the day: the 4:00 102 class seemed functionally brain dead, and I was seriously not in the mood to deal with it. So I told them if they wanted to stay and do the work, fine, but if they'd prefer to go drink coffee or study for their math tests, they should go do that. One guy took me up on it (he actually did have a math test the next period). The rest looked bewildered but decided to stay. I said, OK, but you've got to do the work: I'm not doing it. There were 11 students. They sort-of did the work. But I was interested that they decided to stay. I was expecting a lot more of them to leave when I gave them the option. I wonder if their decision had anything to do with shame....

Second interesting moment: tonight was my first time fulfilling my function as evening assistant chair in terms of meeting with a student who had a complaint. I was anticipating the usual "the rules aren't fair" or "I don't agree with my grades" sort of thing. Not at all. The student's complaints were entirely legitimate: the professor is, in fact, seriously short-changing the students in terms of work they're doing, the way the class meets, and how frequently it doesn't meet. He may be very close to being in breach of contract, in fact. The student was clear, objective, had some documentation of the problems--and said that her main concern is that, given the way the semester is going, she won't be prepared for the next level because she isn't being given assignments that allow her to learn what she needs to.

The sad part is, I don't know what can be done to help her at this stage. The semester is essentially half over, so she can't get her money back; she can't transfer into another section--and even if the professor's behavior suddenly changes drastically, she still won't be as well prepared as she could (should) have been. I told her that I would check with Bruce to see what, if anything, can be done--and thanked her for bringing the problems to our attention. I also told her that the worst case would be that she would have to just grit her teeth and finish up the semester. But I can tell from her demeanor, she's the kind of student I would love to have: I can't speak to the quality of her work, not having seen anything she's written (other than her initial e-mail to Bruce, which is clear and well-constructed), but Id welcome someone with her work ethic, at least, and I am disturbed she is having such an unhappy experience. She deserves better.

So, I'll talk to Bruce about it on Monday. I've asked the student to write a formal letter about the problem to Bruce or to me: we'll see if she does. (She didn't feel comfortable with the idea of meeting with the professor and me at the same time: she's worried about possible vindictive grading, which is an understandable worry.) I also suggested that she urge other students to meet with me or to write letters: the more documentation we have of the problem, the easier it is for us to address it. But it certainly is interesting for me to handle the complaint: usually I only find out about this sort of thing when enough red flags have been raised that P&B gets called in on the matter.

Speaking of handling things, I did manage to force myself to grade a couple of revisions earlier today--and did manage to keep the marking to a minimum. I'm going to take all the rest home over the weekend, even though it's vanishingly unlikely that I'll grade even half that much. But if I can manage to crank through them quickly enough, I may astonish myself. No more for tonight, however. I just found out that any evening assistant stuff I do is by appointment only, so I don't think I need to officially sit here waiting for something to happen. Operating on that philosophy, I intend to pack up and get out of here. My typical treat for surviving until Thursday is to take myself out for dinner, usually to the same restaurant, usually to have the same thing. It lacks adventure, but it scores high on gratification. And a person can use a little of that at the end of the work week. TGIT.