Tuesday, September 21, 2004
 

The Horror, The Horror

'mkay. I teach at a high-ranking university. In other words, I'm supposedly teaching the best of the best. I received the following e-mail from a student today:

teacher
i started writing my paper and i realized my thesis ended up being more about
the power issue then the gender issue. i said in my intro how gernder affected
the kind of power Hedda had on others, however in the body i mainly discuss
how her seeking power over others and eventually failing to do so leads to her
demise. is this ok? or should i reshape the paper to have more to do with
gender? PLEASE SAY ITS OK

Dear lord. I would never, never, ever have sent a piece of work like this to a teacher-- let alone my English teacher, She Who Will Grade the Essays. And apparently s/he (keeping the gender vague here) doesn't even know my name (see syllabus for details on that little issue). Wait-- s/he had to know my name to send me an e-mail. It boggles the mind.

You can no doubt imagine how much I anticipate reading the not-about-gernder paper. I wonder what made him/her decide to capitalize Hedda and nothing else? Why couldn't s/he bring this up during the special, set-aside Q&A time I had today? Does s/he know how to use spellcheck? Punctuation?

These are the questions that haunt you when you teach writing courses.

I'm a-ok with responding to student queries, rough draft questions, thesis statements, etc via e-mail. In fact, I like them to send me this stuff ahead of time so that I can head problems off at the pass and save them (and me) a lot of trouble in the long run. My rule, though, is that I put as much energy into the response as the student seems to have put into the question or writing sample.

We'll have a talk about staying on topic or getting prior approval for alternate topics (which I require pretty far in advance of the paper's due date, owing to some disasters in past experience) when the time comes. However, given that this e-mail makes me anticipate larger structural (etc., etc.) problems, I just said "fine" and made a few minor suggestions.

In addition to that scenario, I've already had a lengthy e-mail (and face-to-face) exchange with a student who can't get it through his head that his thesis isn't arguable. He keeps changing other stuff in the thesis paragraph, but he doesn't change the thesis sentence itself. By my count, I've told him at least three times now that the thesis has to change in order for the paper to be argumentative.

I'm going to get "your thesis statement must present an argument" tattooed on one arm and "make sure you support your assertions with textual evidence" on the other. My forehead will read "statements lack development." In student conferences, I'll just fold my arms across my chest, displaying the tats, and glare. That should get the message across.

Yeah, right. I could do a song and dance routine with Broadway-grade special effects and get no more than blank stares.

Teaching CAN be rewarding-- once or twice in a million years.

Reading: Requiem for a Nun
Listening: Nick Cave
Current Obsession: slowing increasing dread as it comes time to read those first drafts of the students' first papers
Alice: looks (and apparently acts) just like the cat in this "Who's the Boss?" picture

Elvisette philosophized at 10:43 PM