Reflecting on My Teaching Journey Heading into 2026

First off, happy holidays! This piece will probably be coming out around the new year, so I hope all is well for you. With that said, I am going to kick off the new year with a bit of a bummer by talking about how my 7th year of teaching has been going (spoiler: it's not great). What Happened to the Regular Reflections? If you've been around for a while, you might know that I used to do regular reflections after every semester of teaching. In fact, I wrote a reflection every semester for four straight years starting in 2018: Reflecting on My First Semester of Teaching: Autumn 2018 Reflecting on My Second Semester of Teaching: Spring 2019 Reflecting on My Third Semester of Teaching: Summer 2019 Reflecting on My Fourth Semester of Teaching: Autumn 2019 Reflecting on My Fifth Semester of Teaching: Spring 2020 Reflecting on My 6th Semester of Teaching: Autumn 2021 Reflecting on My 7th Semester of Teaching: Spring 2022 Reflecting on My 8th Semester of Teaching: Autumn 2022 Naturally, this became a bit tiresome. It would be like a college student writing a reflection every semester for the duration of their college career. Not to mention that I was also trying to finish my PhD while working as full time lecturer. That said, after another year, I wrote two more reflections covering the following year. Then, I spent two years as a lecturer and wrote a reflection summarizing two more years of teaching. Now, I'm looking at writing another reflection because teaching has gotten really hard. I have started describing it as somewhat soul-crushing, and I want to try to illustrate why. What's New Since the Last Reflection? In my last reflection, I spent a lot of time thinking about all the ways teaching has changed in just a matter of years. For example, I spent quite a bit of time highlighting the new challenges that educators face. Obviously, the big one is generative AI, but I also rant about attendance, deadline heroes, and "easy" classes. With what I've been writing about on this site, you might expect me to continue ranting about generative AI, but I think I'm more frustrated with the social aspect of teaching at this point. Educators are seen as resources to be extracted, much like the way the US sees the rest of the world. Perhaps that mindset has officially permeated the public consciousness. Therefore, in this article, I want to go through my usual statistics, but I also want to tell some stories. You can look forward to my thoughts about what it's like to be an educator right now. Stats & Feedback To start, I wanted to contextualize just how long I've been teaching up to this point. Obviously, I'm not near retirement, but I would say I'm at a point in my career where I've had a lot of experience. For instance, I have officially taught over 1,000 students. Here, you can see that progression over time: As for how that experience has improved my teaching over time, here's the last time you'll see the plot showing my Student Evaluations of Instruction (SEIs) over time: If you're wondering why I say "last time," it's because SEIs have been rebranded to the Survey of Student Learning Experience (SSLE). You might have seen my rant about that. In short, there are new questions that don't map onto the question you see above, so I don't have a figure yet for them. Instead, here are the raw scores for Autumn 2025: QuestionScore (12:40)Score (1:50)Score (4:10)The instructor was available to answer questions and provide help if/when needed (in class, in person, by email, office hours, etc.)4.914.914.84The instructor provided constructive feedback (during class meetings, in person, on my work, etc.) that helped me to learn.4.854.944.81The instructor used teaching methods (such as class activities, discussions, group work, projects, lecture) in ways that encouraged my learning.4.914.944.84This course design and instruction helped me actively engage in my own learning.4.854.894.63The instructor demonstrated genuine interest in teaching.4.944.944.91I felt welcomed in this course (for example, instructor expressed interest in students’ well-being, welcomed students’ perspectives).4.914.914.88The instructor created an environment that valued diverse perspectives and experiences.4.914.914.88 There are also a few state-mandated questions that aren't given a mean, just a distribution. For instance, there is an overall score question which reads: "on a scale of 1-10, how effective are the teaching methods of this faculty member? The scale of 1-10 in the question above measures the effectiveness of the faculty member with 1 being not effective at all and 10 being extremely effective." My sections gave the following breakdown: 12:40—25, 7, and 1 votes for 10, 9, and 8, respectively. 1:50—26, 6, 2, and 1 votes for 10, 9, 8, and 7, respectively. 4:10—23, 6, and 3 votes for 10, 9, and 8, respectively. Sorry if that wasn't the best way to format that data. I suppose I could have just calculated the mean myself, which I think is 9.73, 9.63, and 9.63, respectively. Overall, I got great scores across the board. I also received a ton of supportive feedback. I still need to go through and process that, but I am a little annoyed by the new interface for it. I'm going to need to copy the comments down manually since they're no longer in the end-of-semester report I get. In the meantime, let's talk about some of my broad takeaways from the semester. Broad Takeaways Before we get to story time, I wanted to share some broad takeaways from my recent teaching experiences. ChatGPT Emails I often joke about how the two most painful parts of a semester for me are the first and last two weeks. The last two weeks should be somewhat obvious; I have to grade a bunch of stuff and deal with the fallout when students don't get the grades they want. Meanwhile, the first two weeks suck because I have a lot of folks sitting in on my class that will never get in over the waitlist. This turns into a really painful couple of weeks where students keep asking me if they'll get in, and I have to repeatedly tell them that they have to wait it out. Often, students will go the extra mile to beg me to enroll them when I literally don't have the power. Of course, I'm starting to dread the time between semesters now because I get an influx of emails from students asking what their odds are of getting into my section. I wouldn't mind this so much if a) there weren't so many emails and b) the emails weren't obviously crafted by an LLM. To show you what I mean, here's what an email looked like from a student on my waitlist in 2021: Hello, I am a student currently added to the waitlist CSE2221 for this semester. I need to get in this class as this is one of the last courses that I must take to get into CSE from CSE pre-major and for classes in other classes would conflict my schedule. I'm in a situation that I need to take a leave of absence if I don't get in. I was wondering if I can get into this class. Thank you in advance. Here's a similar email from a student in 2019: I'm in the waitlist for your CSE 2221 section for SP20 at 12:40 and I'm in position number 1. I've been position 1 for several weeks now and was wondering if I'll be able to get a seat in the class? I don't know if you're able to open additional seats or if I'll just have to wait and hope that someone drops the class. These are the types of emails I have come to expect from students. A single paragraph that shares a little context and makes a request. The emails I get now are absurd. They all have multiple paragraphs with language that I can only describe as desperate but demanding. Here's one I received literally right before the holidays: I hope this email finds you well. I am [REDACTED], and I am currently listed at position 3 on the waitlist for your CSE 2231 (Software II) class in Spring 2026. Software II is a required course towards completing my undergraduate degree, so taking this course this spring is critical to my progress through the CSE program. I am eager to establish a solid foundation in the area of software development, and I have received positive feedback from many students regarding your teaching style and course content in Software II. I'm confident that if I am able to take your Software II course this Spring, it will greatly impact my knowledge of the material covered in this class and also prepare me for additional CSE courses in my future. I understand that enrollment may be limited; however, if there is any possibility of being added from the waitlist, I would truly appreciate the opportunity. Thank you very much for your time and consideration. In addition to the desperate tone of the email, I don't care for the glazing. I also don't care for the anime protagonist framing (e.g., "I am eager", "it will greatly impact my knowledge", etc.). It's also just the shear laziness that bothers me. I got one of these types of emails (albeit a brief version) which still had the template text in it: I hope this message finds you well. My name is [Your Name], and I am interested in enrolling in CSE 2231 for the upcoming spring semester. I wanted to ask if you will be teaching this course next semester, and if so, whether you know the scheduled time for the class. Thank you very much for your time and assistance. I was so dumbfounded by this that I sent a screenshot of it to a couple of friends. One of my friends told me to reply by saying something like, "Yes, I will be teaching this course. Here's my schedule: [Insert Schedule]." Of course, if you found the previous two absurd, here's a 5-paragraph essay from a student requesting to join my class: I hope you are doing well. My name is [REDACTED], and I am writing to ask if it might be possible to join your CSE 2231 section for the Spring 2026 semester. I want to be honest and transparent: I will be retaking CSE 2231. I struggled significantly with the course previously, not due to a lack of effort or interest, but because I found it difficult to connect with the way the material was presented. I often felt unsure about where to seek clarification, and at times, it was challenging to approach my previous instructor for additional support. As a result, gaps in my understanding compounded over time. I have heard consistently positive things about your teaching—especially your ability to explain complex concepts clearly and build intuition rather than simply focusing on getting through assignments. Many students have spoken highly of your teaching methods and your approachability, and that is something I feel would make a major difference for me. At this point, my goal is not just to pass the course, but to genuinely understand the material and feel confident in it. I am deeply passionate about engineering and computer science, and having to retake this course has been both discouraging and humbling. That said, I am determined to approach it the right way this time. Learning in an environment where asking questions and building understanding are encouraged would mean a great deal to me, and I truly believe your section would provide that opportunity. I completely understand that enrollment constraints or departmental policies may make this request difficult, and I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this inquiry may cause. I would greatly appreciate any consideration or guidance you could offer, even if it is simply advice on how best to prepare moving forward. Thank you very much for your time and for everything you do for students in CSE. I truly appreciate it. This one, of course, reeks of all the usual tells of ChatGPT writing, like the parallelism in the third paragraph (i.e., "my goal is not just to pass the course, but to genuinely understand..."), and the em-dash in that same paragraph. Though, I think the biggest tell of them all is that these emails are coming from computer science students, and they couldn't write a paragraph to save their lives. Thankfully, I'm not the only one being bombarded by these genAI emails. I took a quick search over in the r/Professors subreddit and saw this post and this post. It seems communicating with another human as a human is dead. Attendance & Participation Broadly, attendance is something I'm really starting to struggle with as an educator. I don't have any good figures to show how bad attendance is across all of my section or any trends over time, but I can show you a few figures to give you an idea of what I'm dealing with. For example, here are the attendance distributions for all three course sections this past semester: 12:40 Section 1:50 Section 4:10 Section At a glance, you can basically see one normal distribution and two bimodal distributions. What I find more interesting are the box plots above each distribution, which show the median attendance information at the center of each plot. As a result, you can clearly see which sections had students showing up and which didn't (i.e., 12:40 had a 56% median attendance rate, 1:50 had a 62% median attendance rate, and 4:10 had a 42% median attendance rate). I find the median to be an important value here because it tells you about half of the population of students. In other words, half of the students in the 4:10 section showed up to less than half of the classes. In a 40 student section, that means that 20 students showed up like a third of the time. Of course, the distribution makes this even more apparent. In the case of the 4:10 section, 11 students showed up between 0% and 20% of the time. Meanwhile, 14 students showed up between 60% and 80% of the time. Literally only 3 students showed up more than 80% of the time. If those were grades, a lot of students would be failing the course. If you stare at the data for too long, you might begin to wonder why the numbers are so bad. While I can't get much more granular than this, I can tell you one thing: students have straight up stopped coming to my labs. This is baffling to me because of the way I run my labs. Unlike most of the classes with strict attendance policies and structured lab environments, I run my labs essentially as office hours. You can come in, work on whatever you like, and get feedback from me or any of the teaching assistants. Obviously, they still should be doing the labs. I just don't restrict them to only working on the labs, and I don't punish them for missing labs. You might be reading this and thinking "oh, then what's the point of attending? Couldn't students just do all that work from home?" And, of course they can. That's the option that I'm giving them. But, here's the value proposition: I know you have the time to come to lab because it's on your schedule. Therefore, you're guaranteed office hours to get help with anything in the course. In fact, I usually advise that students do the labs ahead of time, so they can take advantage of class time to get help with projects. Yet, the feedback I tend to get is that students want more structure. I really don't like this because I find that structure reinforces a K-12 mentality to education. It's not that K-12 is bad. It's just that life itself isn't structured, and you're not going to have someone dictating your time for you. Yes, that is true even on the job. So, when students ask me for more structure, I have to wonder: when no one is structuring your time when you're out in the real world, how are you going to cope? How are you going to grow and develop? How are you going to achieve the things you want to achieve? How are you going to derive meaning from your life? Of course, I can't get students to care about attending. They have to learn that lesson for themselves. It's just that my classroom might be the first time they learn it. That's why I'll sometimes get reviews like, "My grade in the class was my fault and could've easily been higher if I went to more of the classes." Anyway, my peers solve this problem by explicitly punishing absences or giving pop quizzes. I'm not a fan of motivation through fear, so I'll pretty much never go down that path—even if my students say things like: "I wish there was more of an incentive to show up to labs because I often felt unprepared and confused for homeworks." "I think a change that could be made is replace one of the labs with a lecture because not many students showed up to lab." "Encourage attendance in labs more, maybe. Our group showed up for the first few but then we kind of all stopped." Comments like that last bullet drive me insane because they're admitting they chose not to attend. What am I supposed to do about that? Does everything need extrinsic motivation now? Like, am I supposed to bring candy or hand out bonus points? I'm not really sure how to address the attendance problem, but this Berkeley resource seems to line up with my intuition on incentives and punishments. That said, it does recommend "structure with flexibility," so perhaps a short activity at the start of each lab could get students energized. In fact, maybe that's where I'll start incorporating peer instruction questions again. Story Time Typically, I don't like to talk about students without hiding that kind of critique behind a paywall. After all, I think it's somewhat bad form to punch down from a position of power. I'm sure you've seen plenty of psychologists get reamed on TikTok for talking about clients, so it's probably weird for me to do the same. That said, I also think it's really important for people to hear genuine stories about how educators are treated by students. With how frustrated I was with teaching after the last reflection, I've sort of reached a point of disillusionment that was capped off by an email I received just a few days before Christmas. Don't worry. I'll walk us through the whole thing. A Call With the Student Conduct Office I'll start with probably the biggest story of this past semester. For the first time in my academic career, I had to report a student to the office of student conduct. Constant Outbursts Like most of my students, I met this particular student—let's call them Jesse—on the first day of the semester. My first impression of them was during a game of human bingo. As everyone is meeting their peers, Jesse is frantically pacing in front me while complaining that the activity is "too forced." Within the next couple of weeks, Jesse finds himself blurting out questions in class that aren't even remotely appropriate. For example, they asked me if I thought the Chinese were talking all of our jobs. Despite my refusal to engage with the question, they continued to pressure me a few times to answer it. These kinds of outbursts were really common for Jesse. For example, during an exam prep lecture, they were sitting at the front of the class before suddenly spouting off about how they downloaded an AI girlfriend app. As the class is groaning and despite my best efforts to move on, Jesse doubles down by stating that they tried to flirt with the bot, but it didn't work. After a while, I learned to just ignore Jesse, but even that didn't really work. For instance, there was one class where Jesse put his hand up to answer a question. I ignored them, so they started drawing attention to themself by waving their hand rapidly. Then, they started dancing. When I eventually called on them, they answered the question before derailing the entire class. In an effort to hijack the class, Jesse started talking about how they're going to get a job at Tesla. The class sort of starts giggling at them, so I try to pivot away from the conversation. It fails, and Jesse doubles down. They start by weaving this narrative that they're going to be such a good employee at Tesla that they're going to become Elon Musk's child and make a billion dollars a year. This time, when I try to pivot away, Jesse looks up my salary and blurts it out to the class. They then go on this huge tirade about how I'm broke and that they're going to make so much more money than me. I basically lose control of the class in this moment, and Jesse ultimately apologizes before walking out of the class. After that, Jesse stopped coming to class, so their outbursts left with them. On the rare occasions when they did show up to class, they would slide over desks to get to their seat or walk all the way to the front of the class before leaving. It was all very unsettling. Holding Me Up While Jesse was fairly annoying in class (and many students even complained about them to me), they were far more annoying outside of class. At the beginning of the semester, they would regularly hold me up after class to ask me 20 questions. That is not an exaggeration. They would basically rapid fire questions at me until I told them I had to go. Again, I wouldn't mind that, but the questions became increasingly more personal and detached from the course. For instance, they once asked me what I knew about web development before asking me about this website. They then quizzed me about monetization, including how much money my website makes, how many views my website gets, and what techniques I use to make money. In some cases, I felt like I was being help up at gunpoint, of course without the gun. After lab one day, Jesse asked me how old I was. Once they found out I'm a Millennial, they went on a rant about how stupid we are (something to the effect of: "You millennials are so stupid. You all think life is so easy because of ChatGPT."). Then, they went on a rant about their own generation, making similar remarks about how stupid their peers are for not grinding LeetCode or trying to find a job. These kinds of exchanges kept happening. Even during finals week when I decided to hold a pizza party for my graders and students, Jesse showed up to harass me. This time, they came to harass me about their participation grade, despite only showing up to like a quarter of all classes. They then spent the remainder of the party quizzing me about companies and ranting about their peers. In fact, they repeatedly made fun of one of the other students for not having a job yet as a senior. There were even times where they would reach out for handshake but not let go. I had to politely ask them multiple times to let go of me, so I could leave. Couple that with how they would position themself near exits, so no one could come or go. I literally would do everything in my power to avoid them, so I wouldn't be stuck in these situations. Partner Troubles If you think Jesse was only a challenge for me, think again. After about a month of classes, Jesse's project partner contacted me. They said that they couldn't get a hold of Jesse at all. I followed up by asking if they needed a new team, but they told me things worked out. A week later, Jesse's partner contacted me again. That time, they told me that Jesse wanted to alternate the projects, which they thought didn't help their learning. I agreed and offered to break the team up again. Around the same time, Jesse pulled his signature move on me, which was basically holding me up after class to bombard me with questions. While attempting to leave, I was chased down by Jesse, who wanted to tell me that they were having problems with their partner. Jesse then admitted to doing the first two projects and wanted their partner to do the next two. Apparently, Jesse was interviewing for internships and wanted their partner to cover for their work. At that moment, I chose to break up their team. Even the news of their team breaking up turned into a weird exchange. I emailed Jesse early one morning (like 5 AM) to let them know they would have to find a new teammate or work alone, and they emailed me back like an hour later with the sentence, "Why the sudden split?" No greeting. No goodbye. Just four words and a question mark. Report to Student Conduct I ultimately decided to report Jesse to student conduct after chatting with quite a few peers. In fact, I even approached my therapist about it because I was getting really paranoid. Jesse just really gave off horrendous vibes, and I wasn't trying to be caught up in any potential violence. When I contacted student conduct, I literally send the following email: Hello, I am reaching out because I have a student that has been exhibiting disruptive behavior that goes beyond what I would typically have to deal with as an educator, and I do not feel comfortable broaching this subject with the student directly. Without getting into specifics and because I'd prefer some level of anonymity if this meets the standard for a proper report, I'm curious about what sort of resources are available for educators like myself. Here's a high-level overview of what I'm dealing with: Student blurts out inappropriate topics in class with some degree of regularity Student is unable to work in a team Student often interrupts conversations between other students and me to ask me questions that are unrelated to coursework Student often tries to hold me well over the end of the class period to discuss topics unrelated to coursework Student leverages my office hours as an opportunity to discuss topics unrelated to coursework Student offers to follow me to wherever I need to go to continue conversations unrelated to coursework Student overall seems disinterested in academics and sees faculty only as personal resource for extraction I am in the process of documenting some of my interactions with the student, but nothing has escalated to violence or threats. However, I do feel uncomfortable around the student, and I would love to get some support. Thank you, Jeremy The office got back to me relatively quickly, which turned into the usual Zoom meeting. At that meeting, I found out that Jesse is a known entity at the office, meaning I wasn't the first to report them. Nothing really came from this meeting, but I was happy to know that I wasn't crazy for reporting the them. A Tale of Learned Helplessness I know I've been complaining about learned helplessness a lot in the age of generative AI, but I finally had a student who exemplified everything I hate about AI usage. This student—let's call them Bonnie—was a regular fixture at my office hours. Normally, I really enjoy office hours. It's a great time to meet students and help build their confidence. However, Bonnie would monopolize my time, often refusing to do any work themself. To give you a taste of what I mean, I recommend checking out my recent article called Not All Code Completion Is Generative AI. At the bottom of that article, I recount an experience with Bonnie where they couldn't seem to address feedback from the grader without my help. Today, I instead want to talk about a time where Bonnie really pissed me off. I was holding office hours like usual, but I had a lot of demand. Basically, it was letter writing season, and several past students wanted to talk to me. In total, four people came to see me over the span of an hour. I kicked off office hours by helping Bonnie. Given Bonnie's track history, I wasn't really interested in helping them because they often wanted me to do their work for them. As a result, rather than trying to work through the Socratic Method or something, I just gave them a part of the solution and moved on. For the next half hour, I talked to a couple of students looking for a letter from me as well as some career advice. One of the students was a previous student of mine looking for some advice around graduate school. The other student was a current student who was working toward a degree in the humanities and wanted to discuss the role of my letter in their graduate school applications. Eventually, I made it around to the fourth student who wanted some help with a project. I was able to address their problem relatively quickly before rotating back to Bonnie. When I got to Bonnie, they had a small meltdown. They said something along the lines of "you abandoned me" before fake crying like a little kid. I didn't really know how to handle the situation, so I just checked in with them before heading out for class. When I got to lab, Bonnie kept quiet the whole time. As someone who runs their lab as basically extended office hours, I assumed that meant that they finally solved their own problems. I could not be more wrong. At the end of class, when everyone left, Bonnie approached me. They then reprimanded me for not helping them during office hours, saying things like "you spent that time talking about culture and careers when you should have been helping me." The shear audacity of the situation had me frozen. I just said something like "alright man" before leaving class for the day. As I drove home for the night, I was fuming. I just could not believe how entitled the student felt to my time. Like, I would understand if a student came to office hours, and I refused to help them. But, this was a different situation entirely; one which that student might actually want to take advantage of in the future (e.g., to get help with graduate school, scholarships, or job applications). Of course, situations like this make me question my sanity. Should I not be using my office hours to help previous students? But then I realize that they're adults and should be able to manage their time better and find alternative ways to get support, such as through their peers or tutoring. Coming to me last minute for help with a project that you don't even remotely understand has almost nothing to do with me. Complaining to Admin I've often heard of academics worried about students going to admin, but I never thought I would personally experience it. After all, I work really hard at being a good educator, and it has largely paid off with excellent reviews. Yet, this semester I received an email from my course coordinator telling me about a student who had complained to the department chair. The interesting bit was that the complaints weren't about me directly. After all, they weren't one of my students. However, the reason I was roped in was because the student claimed that my class was giving other students an unfair advantage. Apparently, they listed a bunch of things that I do in my section of the course that the other instructors don't do. Now, I haven't met with my course coordinator about this at the time of writing, but talk about ruining it for everyone. I highly suspect that I'm going to have to cut back on some of the ways I support students because one student complained directly to the department chair. The crazy part about this to me is that I haven't gotten to see the email. The student tagged their professor and the department chair. The chair forwarded the message to my boss, and my boss contacted the course coordinator. I'm now at the center of something that has nothing to do with me. It reminds me of when one of my advisors got mad at me because a student copied one of my projects from GitHub. What could that possibly have to do with me? The person who plagiarized is in the wrong here. Looking Ahead One disclaimer I ought to make is that I love my job. Every semester I find the passion to go back into the classroom and improve the experience for my students. With that said, I am finding that the past couple of semesters have worn down on me. I don't know if it's from what I perceive as students getting more helpless and entitled. I don't know if it's from the stress of learning a new language. I don't know if it's from the lack of sleep and thinning patience from caring for a toddler. I don't know if it's from the general sense of hopelessness that's derived from watching our government steer toward fascism. I don't know if there is a single thing I can point to, but I know that teaching has been very draining. And depending on how this meeting goes, it might end up being a lot more draining as I have to rapidly adapt my course for next semester. On the plus side, I get to look forward to going to Japan every May. To be honest, if I had my way, I would only teach the Japan course and my dream open source software course as an elective. There's just very little joy that can be derived from repeatedly teaching a course that students need as a part of their major. Often, I am seen as in the way of a student earning their degree, and very few of the students actually seem interested in learning. With that said, this was a very cathartic piece to write, even if it's a slog to read. Right now, I'm looking forward to completing one more semester of classes, going to Japan, buying a house, and preparing for my second child (who is due in July!). By this time next year, we'll hopefully have a more positive reflection! Once again, thanks for reading. If you liked this, I'm not going to link any more reflections since they're up top, but I will list some other rants: Yes, You Need General Education in College Higher Education Should Not Be a Job Training Program Y’all Need to Stop Using Generative AI for Summaries Of course, you can support this website by heading over to my list of ways to grow the site. Otherwise, thanks again for being here. Take care! Edit 2025/01/12: I wanted to drop in here because tomorrow is my first day of class, and I have received several emails from students with functionally identical text. On one hand, they could be friends writing similar emails begging for enrollment. On the other hand, they could be receiving similar advice on what to send from a chat bot. I don't really care which, but I needed to share these for record keeping purposes: I hope you’re doing well. I’m reaching out because I’m currently waitlisted for your CSE 2231 Software II class, which begins tomorrow, and wanted to ask if there’s any chance I could be added. I’m #4 on the waitlist for the 12:40–1:35 PM section and #5 for both the 1:50–2:45 PM and 4:10–5:05 PM sections. These are the only sections I’m registered for, and I really need to take this course this semester since it’s a prerequisite for staying on track with my schedule. If there’s any flexibility to enroll me, I would truly appreciate it. I’d prefer the 1:50 PM section, but I’m grateful for any option that works. I’m also happy to attend class tomorrow if that helps. Thank you for your time and consideration. Received 2025/01/12 @ 1:37 PM I hope you’re doing well. I’m reaching out because I’m currently waitlisted for your CSE 2231 Software II class, which begins tomorrow, and wanted to ask if there’s any chance I could be added. I’m #4 on the waitlist for the 1:50–2:45 PM and 4:10–5:05 PM sections. I really need to take this course this semester since it’s a prerequisite for staying on track with my schedule. If there’s any possiblity to enroll me, I would truly appreciate it. I’d prefer the 1:50 PM section, but I’m grateful for any option that works. I’m also willing to attend class tomorrow if that helps. Thank you for your time and consideration. Received 2025/01/12 @ 9:23 PM Okay, I'll be honest. I didn't line them up like this when I made my comments above. This is clearly some email template that these two students are sharing, right? It's too similar to even be chat bot related. I don't know why you would send the exact same email as your friend, but you do you brother.