The little things

(A nod in the direction of Charles Hill,, whose morning post prompted me to think about this):

There are some little things that turn out to be big things in my career. I think I once ruefully tweeted that I never realized how much alphabetization was going to feature in my career as a professor. But it does. The way our online gradebooks (well, any gradebook) are set up, it's much faster and more accurate to enter grades from a stack of papers that have been alphabetized by last name. While this is not a big deal in the smaller, upper-division classes (especially the ones where I know everyone), the large intro classes, it becomes kind of a task.

It's made a bit more annoying by the fact that once in a while you get a student who INSISTS on writing their name as "Sarah M." or "Jacob S.," as if they were in grade school. (I will cut the people with surnames longer than seven letters a break, but will also note that often "Sarah M." is "Sarah Moss" or something similar.) It's not a BIG thing but until I have all the names absolutely memorized it causes a moment or two of, "Okay, where in the Ms do I stick this one?" (Even worse: the person who just puts a first name on a paper. I get that once in a while. I only make a stink about it if, for example, I have two Tiffanys in class and they don't use at least a last initial to differentiate themselves.

Also, there's the occasional person who forgets to put a name on a paper. Once in a while, in small classes toward the end of the term, I can figure out who it is by handwriting (or can do so by elimination, providing everyone has done that assignment) but sometimes it means I have to delay entering that grade until I track down the person.

(There are some professors, people more confident of their status and giving fewer darns than I, who simply refuse to grade anonymous papers. I don't know. That seems excessive to me. I also know people who refuse to grade multi-page papers that are not stapled. Again, I can't quite bring myself to do that, but having unstapled papers is a giant pet peeve. And even gianter one is the student who comes up in class and says "Do you have a stapler?" Does it LOOK like I have a stapler? There is not one on the teaching desk. I do not carry a briefcase or bag into class. Do you expect I am going to reach into my brassiere and fish one out of there?)

The thing is, a lot of that stuff feels like small potatoes to harass the students over. I'd much rather they have their papers done and in on time than have their full and complete name on them. (Though I wish the university were faster at changing maiden names to married names on rosters when students marry...)

Another thing that is one of those little things that you just have to do, but sometimes which rankles a bit, is making up and dealing with alternate exam forms. This is an anti-cheating measure. In most classes (all but the very smallest ones - which are ones where I can decree people sit in alternate seats for the exams) I make up Form A and Form B, which have scrambled questions/scrambled responses for multiple choice/possibly variant questions if I can make different ones that feel roughly equivalent.

So once I write the exam, then I have to do the scrambling. (If I used the official "test bank," there's an auto-scramble function. If I used the test bank, which I won't, because the questions don't always reflect how I teach, and also, I worry about there being the publishers' "test banks" floating around out there). And then once the exams are copied, I have to interleave them so that students sitting next to each other get different forms.

(One semester - and again this semester, because I have an enormous class one class - I made forms A, B, and C. The first time I did it it was because I caught a couple students doing the quick exam-shuffle when I handed them out so they got the same form, and I strongly suspected one student of peeking at the other's exam. They wound up both failing the class any way, so my not yanking the exams then and there - with minimal proof - made little difference.)

Again, it's a little thing, but it's just another thing you have to do. (And I have one set of students where I have 65 students - interleaving that many exams does take a while).

One thing that doesn't bug me, but apparently does some, is dealing with student e-mails. To the point where at least one professor has "banned" them, except for ones asking to make an appointment.

Okay. I will say I can see the logic of that, especially if you're a prof with a 700 student mass lecture section. (Though in that case, there are usually labs and recitations with a TA, who kind of serves as a buffer between students and profs).

But I like e-mail. If I didn't do e-mail, I think more of my students would call me on the phone (lots of our students are commuters and are not on campus every day). I don't like the phone. I am awkward over the phone. I wind up saying things either too harshly, or not being forceful enough. And a few of our students have quiet voices/strong accents/cheap cell phones in bad cells and it's hard for me to understand what they're saying sometimes. (I do much better with speech if I can see expression and see their mouths moving. No I do not think I am slightly deaf; it seems my hearing is just fine for music and such. It's probably a weird-brain-wiring thing).

I also like e-mail because I can sit and think and craft a response. On more than one occasion when I've received an e-mail (not always from a student) that made me angry for some reason, I could take a breath, and go, "I will wait 20 minutes before trying to answer that" so I can write my response when I'm not going to say something I might regret. That's not as easy over the phone. (And having had a few bad phone interactions, both with students and with an admin working on behalf of a student, I extra-special don't like the phone)

Anyway. Yes, I get the illiterate/text-speech e-mails sometimes. And yes, they bug me. Not enough to sink e-mail as a communication tool. Sometimes I get what I call "needy" e-mails (the person sending me a detailed memorandum of all the problems in their lives at that point in time as either a reason why they missed class or as part of pleading for an extension on something) but even those are tolerable. And in some cases you just have to read between the lines: sometimes the "needy" person is not saying "I am demanding extra special treatment" but they are saying "help, I'm overwhelmed" and a few encouraging words (or a reference to the campus counselor or another help group, in some cases) can do a lot.

I don't often get what Dr. Duvall complained most about, the "Read the syllabus" e-mails. Very, very rarely do I get an e-mail asking about something I've covered in the syllabus. I do not know if that is because I have the syllabus up on the class webpage, and people consult that first, or if most of my students pay attention to the syllabus, or what. When I do get those kinds of questions, it's someone buttonholing me after class ends (often when I am trying to rush off to eat lunch before my next class).

And in a lot of cases, I find people who ask questions like that aren't really asking because they don't know; they're asking because they're insecure and need reassurance. Like the person who asks, "Is it really true you don't accept late papers?" And I can say, "Yes, I have that in the syllabus. If it's a major emergency, e-mail me, in some cases I grant extensions." Or if they say, "So our first exam is on Sept. 5?" I can just say, "Yes, it is."

I also like e-mail because for the students who are shy enough that coming up and talking to me scares them, often they can e-mail comfortably. And yeah, I know, people need to get over that kind of fear, but baby steps.

Honestly, I don't get THAT many student e-mails. Maybe five or six a week, and some of those may be simple to deal with. (E.g., "I am sick today and won't make it to class, but I know this assignment is due, so here it is as an attachment" and all that takes is to e-mail back, "Thanks, I got it. Feel better."). Perhaps if I were at a much larger school and were teaching 700-person mass lectures, e-mail would soon become a burden, but as I said, in those cases there's usually a whole mini-bureaucracy to serve as a bit of a buffer. The other thing: with bigger student numbers, there are just going to BE more problems. Something I've noticed: about 5% of people in any group are going to have huge problems. Sometimes those problems are beyond their control (family breakup, major illness), sometimes the problems are partly of their own doing (working an extra job so they can afford a shiny new car instead of working just one job and sticking with a boring used car). But still: problems, whatever the source, create ripples, and on some level the faculty member winds up having to deal with the problem in some form. (Or at least hear about it). With 100 students, that means you have five students with major problems. Of those five, two will probably suffer in silence or ask for minimal extensions, etc. Two will ask for more and will keep you updated more than you want. And one, if you're really unlucky, that one will park themselves outside your office and give you running commentary on how awful their life is and how they always get the shaft and how NO ONE ever does anything to fix things for them (even though you are trying to do what you can, within the confines of the class), and you're in the unfortunate position of not wanting to look totally unsympathetic yet not wanting to encourage that behavior further (both for your own sanity, and because you know that many potential employers will show someone like that the door in a hurry). Again, in some cases, a reference to the campus counselor helps (though in some cases, you get back angry: "I'm not CRAZY. My life just SUCKS.")

But with 700 students - well, you then have 35 people (a whole class, for me!) who have major problems. And maybe seven people who think you're their personal substitute parent/counselor/father confessor. And yeah, in that case, I can see discouraging people from constantly e-mailing as being a good thing. (Then again: I've found the people really determined to find a "trouble tree" will come to office hours rather than e-mailing. And I find tales of woe easier to take in e-mail format).

I do tell students that if they e-mail me in the evening they won't get a reply before the next morning when I come in. Most of them accept that; the ones who don't, I think if they complained to my chair, she'd  tell them to learn some patience. (I heard of a case - not on this campus - of a student who filed a formal complaint with the Dean because the faculty member they e-mailed didn't respond until four hours later. Yes, four hours - during which the faculty member was in class. The dean told the faculty member, but also told them that they had deemed the complaint 'unreasonable.'")

I will draw the line, however, if they start expecting us to text our students. Or whatever the next new technology is. (Office Hours by Snapchat? Mercy, I hope not.)