Working with Challenging College Students

After having a mostly positive first semester of teaching, I figured it might be a good idea to chat about what didn't go so well. In particular, I'd like to share an anecdote about one of my more challenging college students. Challenging College Students As someone who completed an undergrad degree, I think I've seen just about everything college students will try to do to pass a class. From brown-nosing to outright plagiarism, college students will stop at nothing to survive a semester. Despite everything I'd seen, I was never prepared to fend off student attempts to game the system, and that made my previous semester as a professor especially difficult thanks to one student in particular. But, before I get to them, let's talk a little about what can make certain college students difficult to work with. Laziness As a hard worker, I find laziness to be one of the most infuriating traits in a person. If you've been around for awhile, you probably know I split off from a group website for that very reason. Well, I don't much care for laziness in students either. You don't have to be the smartest or most hard working student. You just have to put in the effort. Otherwise, I can't help you. Laziness can manifest itself in a lot of ways including: Poor attendanceMissing assignmentsPlagiarism In general, however, laziness can be recognized as a lack of effort in any area of the course. In my case, it often showed up during labs where students would do the minimum amount of work required and leave. Cunning In addition, I don't much care for people who have to bend and warp rules to achieve their goals. In other words, I don't like people who think they have to lie and cheat to succeed. For students, cunning often manifests itself through: CheatingPlagiarismDishonestyStory tellingBrown-nosing Of course, what bothers me the most about students who feel the need to use manipulation and deceit is that they're usually fairly intelligent. In other words, they often don't need to cheat to succeed. They're already plenty capable of understanding the material, but they refuse to put in the effort (which goes back to laziness). Helplessness Beyond laziness and cunning, I have a hard time dealing with people who depend on others to hold their hand. Some people need a little extra help, and I'll always be there for them. However, I have little patience for the helpless. As a teacher, I do a lot of hand holding. Whether its providing helpful practice material, holding office hours, lecturing, or responding to emails, I try to do as much as I can to help my students. At the end of the day, however, they have to help themselves. For the students who can't help themselves, they often rely on the following behaviors to cope: BeggingPleadingQuittingBlaming For me, the challenge is identifying students who can't figure out how to help themselves and students who refuse to figure out how to help themselves. A lot of times, I'll identify folks in the first group just before a big assignment or exam. The second group will usually disappear after failing that big assignment or exam. In either case, these types of students are challenging. In the next section, I'll dive into a bit of an anecdote on a student I had in my first semester that exhibited laziness, cunning, and helplessness all in one semester. I can't imagine I'll have a student quite as difficult for a while. The High Maintenance Student As a first semester professor, I didn't know exactly what to expect over the course of the semester. As far as I knew, I was going to teach a lecture and grade some assignments. Never had I expected to have to deal with a student who was so high maintenance. For the sake of hiding their identity, let's call the student Zach. Add/Drop Period As a bit of background, I started teaching in the fall with a Monday, Wednesday, Thursday schedule. My first class of that semester was a Wednesday, so students had roughly two classes to figure out if they were going to drop or not due to the add/drop policy. If any students chose to do so, they were automatically replaced by students on the wait list. After the first week, the wait list disappeared, and students could be added by hand up until the end of the second week. Near the end of the first week, someone reach out to me to ask if they could get into my section. Since the wait list was still in effect, I directed them to another section that had a vacancy. By the middle of the second week, I had a drop. Since the add/drop process was not automated during the second week, I had a permanent vacancy (39/40 students). With one day to spare, I received an email from Zach that read—and I'm paraphrasing: I had an issue with my financial aid that caused me to drop all the courses I need to graduate. Can my advisor let me in to your course? I have all of the assignments completed.Zach, August 30, 2018 After reading their email, I felt bad, so I decided to cut them a break. In fact, I even gave them an extra week to get all caught up on their assignments. After all, I figured they could use the help. They were probably behind in all of their courses. Gaming Submissions Right out of the gate, Zach started giving me trouble. In particular, they were always looking for ways to turn assignments in as late as possible. My friend, Robert, affectionately refers to these types of students as Deadline Heroes. During the third week of class, Zach sent me an email asking what the policy was for turning in assignments. Apparently, they turned in their assignment based on the course website due date, but the online submission tool said the submission was late. As it turned out, Zach had followed the syllabus rule of turning in their assignments before class a little too literally. For good reason, the submission tool had a one hour buffer before lecture. In other words, if class was at 4PM, the assignment was due by 3PM, so students weren't coming into class late. Of course, I'm not that rigid on deadlines, so I told them not to sweat it. Little did I know that they would continue to submit work at the last possible minute for the rest of the semester. Don't believe me? Of the 52 assignments including exams, Zach managed to submit 30 of them late. How is that even possible? Poor Attendance As the semester went on, I stopped seeing Zach. They weren't coming to class, and they weren't coming to lab. Unfortunately, I also don't have any data to back that up because they never signed into the online tool which I use to track attendance. As far as I'm concerned, they were a ghost. As we got close to the first midterm, Zach made an effort to reach out about some disability paperwork that I needed to sign. All they had to do was bring me the paperwork, and we'd be good to go. Unfortunately, they never did. By the time the first exam came, I finally got to see Zach again. Like many students who disappear during the semester, they made a surprise appearance for the exam. At that point, I thought maybe they didn't actually have a disability, and that they were just trying to play me. Once I finished grading the exams, I discovered that Zach scored a mid 60 on an exam with a low 80 median. Of course, I wasn't all that surprised because they weren't coming to class or completing their assignments on time. To be honest, I didn't have a lot of sympathy for them. Disability Paperwork Over the next two months, Zach disappeared. I didn't see them in class or lab, and they were still completing their assignments at the last possible minute. Then, just a day before the second midterm, I received a multi-paragraph email from Zach that read something like the following: When and where are your office hours? I'd like to discuss the disability paperwork. Also, the course coordinator should be speaking to you soon about my situation regarding missing assignments. Oh, by the way, I will be taking the exam tomorrow in disability testing center.Zach, November 5, 2018 Now, before I dig into this, I just want to point out that this was the second time Zach requested information about my office hours via email. In other words, I had already answered this question once, and the information was freely available on the course website. As a result, I just ignored their question. Unfortunately, that led to a follow-up email requesting more information about my office hours. I responded: All the information you need is on the course website, but to summarize:Caldwell 414:Tuesday/Thursday 5:15PM - 6:10PMFriday 12:45PM - 1:40PM Jeremy, November 5, 2018 After that, I reached out to my course coordinator to confirm Zach's story. According to them, Zach did come to their office to fill out the disability paperwork behind my back. However, the course coordinator made no mention of outstanding assignments. At that point, I was a little confused, but whatever. I had exams of my own, and I didn't have time to waste playing detective. Instead, I continued on with my life. Midterm 2 Mischief As expected, Zach didn't turn up to the second exam. To be honest, I half expected them to not take the exam at all. Something about my interaction with them up until that point made me think they were a bit dishonest. That said, their exam turned up, and they somehow managed to score a low 90 despite never attending class. When I saw their score, I had to do a bit of self-reflection. Maybe all they needed was a little extra time, and I was just an inconsiderate asshole. Of course, they never showed up to class to retrieve their midterm. However, they did surprise me at one of my office hours following the exam. And by surprise, I mean they walked in as I was leaving and cornered me into a rather awkward 10-minute conversation. According to them, the course coordinator said I was responsible for working out special circumstances for their missing assignments. Since I couldn't fact check them and I was feeling a bit bad after seeing their second midterm score, I decided to offer them a deal: all missing assignments could be completed by the end of fall break for full credit. As I made that deal, I had a sinking feeling in the back of my mind that I was going to go on to regret it. Somehow I just knew that the agreement would come back to bite me. I just knew I should have created a paper trail. End of Semester Shenanigans Fall break came and went, and I never received any of those missing assignments from Zach. What was the point of cutting them a break if they weren't going to take advantage of it? Shortly after getting back from break, Zach started submitting those assignments. Unfortunately, I didn't have any documentation of the deal, so I quietly graded those assignments without penalty. I figured there was no point in wasting even more energy on Zach, so I let them abuse our deal. With just a day left in the semester, I got yet another email from Zach. Apparently, they just realized they never came to class, so they didn't get their second exam back. Since I'm such a nice guy, they figured they could steal more of my time to get their exam. Of course, I wasn't having any of that, so I responded: "I’ll have them in class today. Otherwise, I don’t plan to hold onto them." Since Zach had missed every class since the last midterm, I figured they wouldn't bother showing up to class that day either, and I was right. Unfortunately, what I didn't expect was for them to show up exactly as class ended. As everyone was leaving, Zach appeared at my front table begging for their midterm 2. From there, we had a brief exchange where they apologized for having a doctors appointment, thanked me for returning their exam, and told me they were still working on late assignments. In the moment, I was so baffled that I just turned over the exam, repeated the phrase "sounds good" 6 times, and proceeded to leave the classroom. Surely they couldn't still think they could take advantage of me like that. Finals After that last class, I spent the next several days getting all of my grading done and preparing for finals. Then, in the span of two days, I took 2 exams, gave an exam, graded my exams, and left on a trip to New Jersey. In case that seems like a lot, it was. See, the plan was to get all my work done by Thursday night (December 13th), so I could race out to New Jersey to spend the weekend with a friend of mine. I figured if I got my grading done, I'd be safe to leave despite being on contract through the weekend. Friday morning rolled around, and I published all my students' grades. At that point, I hopped in the car, ran Morgan to work, and raced off to New Jersey. About two hours into the drive, I got an email from Zach that read something like: Hey, just wanted to let you know I should be done with my assignments by today or tomorrow.Zach, December 14, 2018 Since I was driving, I couldn't exactly respond, so I completely blew off the email. After all, I was off contract by the end of the weekend. If they had any problems, they would have to go through the course coordinator. Of course, that wasn't even the worst part. Not only were they begging me to grade random assignments they never turned in, but they didn't even hold up their end of the bargain. "Today or tomorrow" turned into early next week. Did they really expect me to blow off the registrar, so they could get a few fractions of a percent added to their grade? Naturally, I had nothing left to give, so I ignored Zach and continued toward New Jersey. What were they going to do about it? Preparing for Future Challenges Since then, I haven't heard from Zach or the course coordinator about Zach. Apparently, they were satisfied with the C+ they were awarded. That said, I have to wonder how they ever made it to senior year. Surely they couldn't have done this to all of their professors. At any rate, I think I've learned a lot from Zach. Mainly, all special arrangements must have a paper trail. It's not fair to me or any of the other students to allow a student to do whatever they want without consequence. I think we can all agree on that. That said, in the future, I want to continue offering support to students who need it. After all, we all have our own problems, and sometimes we just need a little help. That will never change. I just hope I never have to deal with anyone taking that much advantage of my compassion for awhile.

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