The Frustrated Professor

April 17th, 2007

By: Dr. Tamekia Rose (pseudonym)

I could write about numerous stupid things my students do. Seriously, but I’m relegating this rant for things that are major, and I definitely feel these things are major because they seem to be indicative of the general mindset of college students (specifically college-AGED college students). I’m just…yeah…

So, what am I talking about? I’m talking about the general laziness and apathy that appears to be afflicting the average student today. These students really don’t seem to give a damn about their work. They come to class with the attitude of “I’m here…now entertain me.” Some students seem to think that by having the power point outline of the chapter, they’ll be fine…even though I EXPRESSELY told them that relying on the packet alone will ensure failure as the packet is just an outline of the chapter. Some students spend their time dawdling and doodling; while others come to class and are just there. No notes, no books, no paper, no pen or pencil…NOTHING…just them. Like I’m supposed to be surprised and impressed that they deigned to attend a class that THEY (or rather, their parents or financial aid) are paying for. I’m sorry, but your presence does not impress me; doesn’t work that way. So, naturally, once the failing begins, you would think that they might take more of an interest in their work and their progress. You’d THINK that. But it is not always the case….not even most of the time. I’ve told students to read, I’ve told students to attend tutoring sessions, I’ve told students to visit me during office hours. And yet, office hours are the loneliest hours of the day I just DO.NOT understand it. Now, if it was just that alone you wouldn’t be reading this. Ooooohhh…but it gets RICH…like triple chocolate heart attack cake rich.

For example:

There’s a girl in my class whom we’ll call Tisha. Now, Tisha is failing my class but she’s in a position where, if she worked hard, she could probably pass my class with a C. They had their lecture mid-term on Friday before Spring Break and they have their lab mid-terms this week (I have one lecture but three labs for freshman Biology). When students have exams in my class, if they wait around, then I’ll grade their tests and give them their grade immediately. Well, while I was grading her lecture mid-term, she mentioned being upset that Duke lost to VCU in the 1st round. I too was GEEKED (thus I expressed my happiness) and she said, “Yeah, I saw the game in the club last night.”

Wait…WHAT????

So, she proceeds to try to explain to me how they have TVs in club. I’m like, “I’ve been to clubs before…I know they have TVs. My question to YOU is, you KNEW you had a mid-term in my class, a class you are FAILING by the way; and yet, you were at the club last night???” She launches into this narrative about how hard she had studied and how she just couldn’t study any more as her brain (which, I’m thinking, is about the size of a pea) couldn’t retain any more information. Now, that would have been great if she had retained a bunch of information to begin with. But VA girl got 25.5 out of 50 on the mid-term…and that’s WITH some bonus points (I think she got five or seven bonus points)…so OBVIOUSLY she didn’t retain that much or she didn’t understand whatever it was she retained. Now, I completely get that your brain shuts down and refuses to function after so much studying. I completely understand that. What I don’t understand is being out at the club the night before a mid-term. I JUST.CAN’T.FATHOM.THAT. You can try to justify it as much as you want…oh, she needed to relax, she needed to let loose, blah blah blah. BUMP THAT…THEY WERE STARTING SPRING BREAK THE NEXT FRIGGIN’ DAY!!!! She was gonna have a WHOLE DAMN WEEK to relax and let loose, even with needing to study for the lab mid-term. Which brings me to the next episode…

So, the first section of Biology lab had their mid-term yesterday. We reviewed for this mid-term before they went on break. I told them what was going to be covered and what types of calculations would be on the test. Note the word CALCULATIONS as they tend to indicate that you probably need a CALCULATOR. And they should have known this, not only because I told them, but because they needed them to do the homework which were based on those calculations. Well, that and the fact that they couldn’t do basic math to save their lives (no, seriously…I asked them to convert 10% into a fraction or a decimal without a calculator and they all looked at me like I asked for their first-born). Only 42% of the students brought calculators. This is for a test in which 13 or the 25 questions involved calculations. That, in and of itself, is just…YEAH. OH…but it gets BETTER!!!

Remember Tisha…Ms. “I’ma-go-shake-my-ass-the-night-before-a-mid-term?” She was one of the ones who didn’t have a calculator (BIG surprise, right?). So, she gets the test, looks over it about ten times with a look of bewilderment, and says, “Dr. Rose, is it possible for me to come back and take this test later because I don’t have a calculator and I don’t have $100 to spend on one of those big fancy (graphing) calculators.” Once I got over the initial shock of the question, I said, “No you may not take it later and you don’t need a $100 calculator. You can go to CVS and get a $10 scientific calculator like I did. Wait, don’t you have a calculator on your phone?” Naw, she got one of those fancy “I-can-play-music-and-videos-and-take-pictures” phones, but it does not have a calculator…so she was basically out of luck. I mean the students who had calculators, if they wanted to, they could let their classmates borrow theirs and the owners would get some extra credit for being helpful. But the fact is they shouldn’t have had to basically cover the backsides of their bamma ass classmates.

Yea…so, I didn’t even get into the mundane everyday stuff; but I’ve discussed these issues with other professors both in my department and others and we all seem to have the same problem. THESE KIDS JUST DON’T GIVE A HOOT ABOUT THEIR GRADES!!! And this makes my job a little bit harder. Why - Because it places me in a position of caring more about their progress than THEY do. And it’s easy to say “Well, Mekia, if they don’t give a damn, then why should you?” Well, I’ll tell you. It’s because I don’t want to become that professor. You know the professor who seemed to have a chip on his/her shoulder, who seemed to have so much angst and condescension and disdain for his/her students, the one that made you think “Why in the HELL is this cat a professor???” Yep, I never wanted to be that person. Additionally, I’ve had professors who were just a little bit more than a professor; they were mentors, sounding boards, dare I say, FRIENDS (once I banged their class out, of course). They enriched my college experience and helped me get to where I am now. I LUUUURRRRVVVEEEEDDDD these professors and knew that if I became a prof, I’d be cut from the same cloth. But see, to be an effective one, you gotta care…and I don’t know about y’all, but it’s not so easy for me to stop caring for folks. I might not necessarily like them or mess with ‘em like I used to…but I STILL care about them and don’t want anything bad to happen. I CONSTANTLY have got to tell myself (and thus anyone I talk to) that I do NOT feel sorry for them but, honestly, that’s sort of a lie; ‘because I do care to a certain extent…maybe because I think of my own experience.

Some of these students who just don’t give a damn come from, well…not the hood…but not that far from it…so college is somewhat of an escape. They’re quite obviously having fun so it seems to me that they would do whatever is necessary to keep that party goin’ by keeping up the grades. I mean…I ain’t gon’ lie…the fact that I was partyin’, drinkin’, chillin, eatin’, pledgin’, steppin’, WHAT-EV-ER with some of the smartest, coolest, best-lookin’ Black folks I’d ever met in my life in one of the best, if conflicted, cities in the WHOLE world (at least, pre-Katrina, it was) was GREAT motivation for me to keep it up academically. They don’t get this no matter how many times I tried to tell them that it is very possible to PARTY.YOUR.ASS.OFF and still get good grades.

Anyway…I just had to get that off my chest….AND share those stories with you…’cause they are WAAAAYYYY too incredulous NOT to share. Feel free to leave any questions, comments, disses, *LOL*, *LMAO*, etc. They WILL be appreciated!!!

The pseudonym-ed author of this rant is a 30-something professor at an HBCU who has just recently finished her doctorial work.

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6 Responses to “The Frustrated Professor”

  1. goldiilocs on April 18th, 2007 4:11 pm | link

    Very interesting article. I am a college student, and I have classmates like this, and I’ve been guilty of not giving my
    all at times, as well. It gives me a new perspective, and it’s sad that people in general, just do not care about their
    education.

    *Side note: I think it’s funny she said ‘bamma’….she must be from the DC/MD/VA area.*

  2. D. Yobachi Boswell on April 18th, 2007 6:44 pm | link

    and I’ve been guilty of not giving my
    all at times

    We almost all are. The difference is it being a regular habbit
    and modus operendi, versus just having moments.

  3. jimdwalton aka JD on April 23rd, 2007 4:24 pm | link

    My son who is 24 fell in love as a 2nd year student. He stopped going to class, his performance suffered and now he works the 11 to 7 am shift in a warehouse. He is decidicated and works hard while trying to attend community college. This is the out come, if he had worked half as hard, he could have found an easier way to earn an income. This is a difference between black and white. white kids can screw up for years and still be allowed to recover. For us, sometimes just one screw up can lead to a life of misery. There are few club nights in a life of misery.

  4. D. Yobachi Boswell on April 23rd, 2007 6:09 pm | link

    Very good points.

    Often white folks will have all kinds of money to fall back on
    and can recover quite easily from this type of thing. The more that
    I’ve realised this phenomena the more it amazes me how many grown
    white people have parents paying their rent and so forth even into their 30s.

  5. Shayla Jordan on April 24th, 2007 4:11 pm | link

    That’s incredible Dr. Rose. I like when you talk about professors actually caring. Sometimes I wish in college they would have been a bit more humane…

    Sometimes we are too afraid to ask for help. This is one of my own vices. Instead we shose give up and frustrated ourselves… or for some.. party our way through.

  6. D. Yobachi Boswell on April 26th, 2007 8:59 pm | link

    Yeah Shayla, I think dealing with stress and frustration is a lot
    of college students problem. Schools, and more so parents need to
    be developing better device in their children to deal with such.

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