Can I take your class but not actually attend?

Yesterday I got a strange request from a student. She wants to enroll in one of my classes in the spring, but she only wants to attend class twice a month because she lives in Houston. The class meets twice a week (i.e., 8 times per month), so essentially she's asking for an excused absence 6 times a month for the entire semester. Are you kidding me?? She apparently asked two other professors for the same favor. So she wants to get her degree from a university in Denton, but doesn't want to actually attend classes here. Uhm... don't they have universities in Houston??

Hints

For a project on diversity, a student wrote a paper about visiting a church that was a different denomination than the one she usually attended. She wrote, "The Methodist church is very different from my church. At my church everyone takes a bible to church with them, HINTS the name Bible church."

Due date extensions

Four days into a short semester (two days after the first assignment was due), I receive this e-mail from a student: "I just ordered my textbook today. Can you please extend the due dates for me." Uhm.... No!

Career Goals

Here are the career goals one of my students wrote in a document she is taking to her practicum supervisor (i.e., a potential future employer). Notice how specific and realistic they are (not!).

1 year- Within one year I plan to be working with children and families.

5 years- In 5 years I plan to be well off into my career. I am not sure if I want to go to graduate school as of now so I hope to have made up my mind by this time. I would also like to be working with families or children within an organization.

10 years- In 10 years I plan on being very settled somewhere and satisfied with my life. I have big plans for myself so therefore I'm sure I will have everything I want by then. My career, family and home are the goal. I want a business of my own working with families so by then I hope to have a plan for being on my way to life long success.

Test fishing

One student recently came in to go over a tricky multiple-choice midterm with me. We discussed why her answer on a certain question ("Which of the following provides an operational definition of the concept hunger?") was wrong, and why another answer was right. After some explanation, she said, "I understand why the answer I put was completely wrong, and why this answer is clearly right, but I still think I should get partial credit." So... for being completely wrong you want... to be graded as partially right?

Half a class for full credit!

I had a grad student email me last week and ask about my fall class. The class is half online, and half face-to -face. She said she couldn't get childcare during the face to face meetings, but wanted to know if I was OK with her still signing up- and if it would be OK if she just completed the online portion.
Ummm, ok I guess if you only want a chance to earn half a grade....(Which wouldn't count for anything at the grad level)...

Recs

In the second week of classes last semester one of my students asked me to write a recommendation letter for him. Hm.... What was your name again? :)

One of my favorites...

"Hi, I'm a graduate student in your department and I live 5 hours from your campus. I just can't make it to classes that are held at 5:30pm on Wednesday nights. Could you please move the class to Saturdays or set up a special online course just for me?"

Top 10 of the silly (read: frustrating) things students say and do

10) Send you an e-mail at 11pm (or even 2am) with advising questions or request for a meeting and expect to have an answer by 8am the next morning

9) Enroll in the same course multiple times (but somehow forgot because last time they took the course was two years ago and they didn’t update their degree plan or look at their course completion list online), and then somehow expect you to fix it.

8) Write a long e-mail to the professor telling her how she should be teaching the class (yes, a graduate student did that to one of my colleagues)

7) Make endless grammar/spelling errors like “supposably”, “irregardless”, and “defiantly” (the latter which means something quite different than “definitely” which was the word they meant to use)

6) Use Wikipedia as their main source of citations.

5) Announce to you that they just don’t know how they’re gonna learn anything from their practicum site because they already know more about everybody who works there (Uhm… maybe what you can learn is a bit of humility!)

4) Beg for (or even demand) a grade change when they clearly didn’t earn it. The new generation of students have serious entitlement issues. (A student of one of my colleagues even had the audacity to complain that she got a C in the class, because this was a parenting education class, and parenting is easy so she should get an A…… Uhm, you did not earn an A, because you did crappy work! … And this was a graduate student)

3) Ignore the fact that you went to school for 22 years and have a Ph.D., yet somehow they think it’s okay to call you by your first name (I even had a student call me “Ms. Brigitte” in an e-mail, and I wanted to write back “That’s DR. Brigitte to you!”

2) Walk across the graduation stage as you sit and ponder how they could possibly think they were graduating when they haven’t taken the last two capstone courses.

1) Ask you if they’re required to buy the textbook (“No, I just put it on your syllabus for fun!”)