I'm feeling annoyed, not so much by my students per se, but the sense of guilt and obligation I feel when their needs conflict with mine.
Case #1: A student asked me to write a letter for a major university award *less than two weeks* prior to the deadline. On the one hand, this is a student whom I very much like, and for whom, in most circumstances, I would be happy to write a letter of rec. But I sat down with my calendar and came up with NO AVAILABLE WORK TIME in the next few weeks for anything that wasn't already on my radar (including writing a letter for another student for an award with the same deadline). This is happening, in large part because I'm heading out of town for 5 days for a professional conference. But even in the best of circumstances, two weeks is bare minimum notice for getting such things done.
Case #2: My New Course has a paper due on Monday. They have known about this since the beginning of the semester. I made it very clear when I am available to talk to them about their drafts. I had office hours today. Not one of them showed. And now I have *THREE HOURS** worth of appointments with them tomorrow, which also happens to be LG's birthday. Under most circumstances, I would have said no way. But I feel like I owe it to them, as I cancelled class on Wed to attend the conference. In that three hours I will not be (a) working on my R&R which still hasn't been sent back, (b) packing for the conference, (c) making LG's birthday party invitations, (d) taking care of committee nonsense that can't wait, or (e) accomplishing anything else on my to do list. I like this group of students. But I do not like feeling like this.
When I taught on campus (I teach full time online now) I had peer reviews days in class during which I also conferenced with each student. Now I do the same in my online classes. They do peer reviews and I'm available for three days from 6 am to 10 pm by appointment for IM conferences (I'll do voice chat if they want to but I never talk on the phone to students).
ReplyDeleteThanks for your response, VirtualProf! (It's always good to hear from someone who hasn't commented before) I'm quite fond of the peer review approach and use it frequently, sometimes in combination with individual conferences. I used to be a writing tutor and very much enjoy working with students one-on-one talking about their work. But there's a limited amount of time in the day, and there's really no excuse for students not using office hours or waiting to the last possible second to ask for an extra appointment...
ReplyDeleteHi gwinne -- Oh I agree 100%. The thing that always ticked me off was that the students who needed the conference the most were the ones who never, ever made an appt to see me. Then they would have all these excuses. So I finally decided to just take conferencing to the classroom. That way they wouldn't have an excuse because I got them all in conference at some point or another in the drafting process.
ReplyDeleteNice to meet you!