Man, the Entitlement of Some Students

As of Saturday, I have put another semester in the books for my adjunct position, and a few of the students kind of upset me. I do not know about some of the millennials. Actually, you know what? I’m not going to put all of these “kids” into a single, struggling box, because I hate when people use generalizations for me.

For the lab course that I teach, I try to have everything graded by the end of the last class, so the students will know their final grades by the time they leave. Of course many of the students are like “how can I improve my grade?”. Do you give any extra credit?

Student A earned a very “strong” grade of 23%. However she had the NERVE to catch an attitude with me, by asking “Well HOW did I get a 23%?” Umm, the student did not turn in 9 out of the 13 assignments and she failed ALL four exams. Also, after each exam, I put both the exam grade and the student’s current grade, just to avoid last day questions about their grade. It’s not like she went from an 80% to a 20%; she has been riding on a low F for a HOT minute.

Here comes the excuses:

1. To be perfectly honest, I thought she was absent for those 9 classes, but she said that she arrived late. Actually that was some B.S. If a student knows that I call roll at the beginning of every class, then most tardy students would let the professor know that he/she arrived late. Another reason that was B.S., I think that I would have noticed someone wearing a burka.
2. She had “issues” printing out the assignments. How did she manage to turn in the 4 assignments?
3. She has “allergies” that prevented her from arriving to class on time. Ok, that still does not explain why the assignment were not turned in. Also, the Spring semester is from January to May. Do people have allergies in cold ass NYC?

The parts that annoyed me. 

1. She asked me what she could do to “fix” her grade. Do these students think that I make up their grades? It’s simple arithmetic folks.
2. (A low key annoyance) All of this going back and forth with her was making me late for a late brunch meeting with my friends.

Just a little background about my class. It’s a section of General Biology 1101. Since many of  our students come academically weak high schools and are not science majors, the class is pretty much taught at a high school level. The class has to turn in 13 homework assignments (worth 5-6 points), take 4 exams (20 points), complete in two lab reports. The homework assignments and exams are 80% of the grade, while the two lab reports make up 20% of it. The homework assignments are based off of the prelab readings, so one could find all of the answers in either the lab manual or from my slides.

Long story long, the only way to fail my course is if you do not do the assignments. Think about it, if one does four assignments perfectly, then that is pretty much equivalent to earning a 100% on a test (four assignments more or less equals one exam).

Ah, the joys of being an educator (BTW, I sill miss the show “Happy Endings”).