Education – Page 3 – The Renegade Coder

Just about every semester, I get a student that decides to make my life more difficult than it has to be. In almost every case, it's because this student feels entitled to a certain grade. Unsurprisingly, this semester was no different. Welcome to yet another rant about teaching college students. Fair Warning At the time of writing this article, I had been done with teaching for over a month. Part of me feels like the rant will be a bit more objective, but I do feel like it will lack a bit of obvious frustration. Make of that what you will. As a fair warning, I'm generally a forgetful person. On one hand, this makes me really good at moving on from troubling situations. On the flip side, it makes documentation all the more important. That's why most of this article will be written based on what I have written down—as opposed to what I can remember. Specifically, this article is written about one student who continually made my life a living hell throughout the semester. For whatever reason, I had one of these students every semester. Though, this one was particularly rough considering the amount of teaching experience I had coming into the semester. At any rate, I just wanted to take some time to warn you that this rant is a bit different from my typical rants. To kick us off, I'll be sharing the email I almost sent to them at the very end of the semester. Then, we'll talk about what led up to that point. The Unsent Email As promised, here's the email I drafted for the student in question: Hi [Insert Name Here],Couple things:First, I think we've been more than generous this semester with the opportunities we've given students to be successful during the transition to online learning. Mainly, we provided five 35-minute open-book quizzes using questions that we would have put on a 2-hour closed-book exam. In addition, I provided the opportunity to submit late homework in place of participation which I don't believe was given to any other section of the course. Clearly, I tend to be more forgiving on assignment deadlines than any other instructor. Finally, among other things, attendance was fully waived, so students were able to completely manage their own time. Second, I know I mentioned that students would be able to look at quiz #5 on Monday, but I forgot about it. Since then, no one has brought it up until now. That said, I don't think it's completely unfair to have not seen it before grades were submitted. Typically, students don't get a chance to see their final in this class (or any class as far as I know). Regardless, I have published the quiz answers for your perusal.Third, when we spoke last, you were worried about getting a B-. Again, I assured you that you would likely get the grade you wanted without any need to dispute grades. Unsurprisingly, when the project grades came in, you earned that B- without any help. Now, it seems you want to further dispute over every last point to see if you can continue to improve your grade. This is not an opportunity that has been afforded to any other student. Also, to address your curve comment: [Insert Name of Boss] personally looked over our grades and decided that a curve was not appropriate. That said, I rounded up anyone's grade that was .5% away from the next boundary. Clearly, 2.1% is a bit of a stretch. Likewise, I don't think subjectivity is a valid argument considering that the grading was consistent (and most grading is subjective to an extent anyway—that's not specific to this course). In other words, every student received grades from the same graders, so your experience would mirror other students. If a grade change were to be made for one of your assignments, it would have to be made for every student. Regrades take a lot of time and effort, so the reality is often "what you see is what you get." Overall, I feel you've been reactive rather than proactive in this course. This email is a perfect example of that. Had you asked for help throughout the semester, you may not have had to dispute grades.At any rate, I have already submitted grades. Jeremy Grifski, Spring 2020 (draft) Clearly, I was very frustrated. Of course, there's a ton of context that went into this email. We'll take a look at what led up to this in the remainder of this piece. The Lead-up If you're the type of person who reads my reflections ever semester, then you already know sort of how this semester went. For everyone else, here's the summary: life was good, but COVID-19 made things messy. Well, it was mostly good anyway. Of course, there always seems to be a student that wants to make my life difficult, and this semester was no different. Specifically, I had one student who always seemed to complain about everything; let's call them Chris. You name it, Chris complained about it. Overall, the complaints ranged from due dates to course content. Me being the nice guy that I am, I was constantly trying to accommodate them. For instance, I regularly gave them extended deadlines for assignments. Unfortunately, if there was something I couldn't fix, they would never shut up about it. Eventually, they became that "Old Man Yells At Cloud" meme to me. Never was anything in their control; someone was always trying to get them. Of course, to some extent, that was true. I do find certain classes to be a bit "gatekeepy"—for lack of a better word—and, my course was no exception. We purposely make the content needlessly tricky to fail students. It's just the truth. But, as I mentioned already, I'm not always in control of course content, so all I can do is accommodate students to the best of my ability. In the next section, we'll talk about the different types of accommodations throughout the semester. Providing Help for Those in Need One of the reasons I love teaching is that I get to feel like I'm helping. Perhaps that is a byproduct of the way I grew up. In particular, I grew up in a family that did a lot of complaining, and I often wished there was something I could have done about it. Now, I suppose my desire to help others has taken the form of teaching. Although, who knows? I'm not a therapist. At any rate, helping people is what I love about being an educator. At the very least, I know I can walk into the classroom (figuratively, of course—thanks, COVID-19) and help a student learn something new. Of course, I sometimes get the chance to do a bit more than teach. For instance, I'm often asked to write letters of recommendation. Likewise, sometimes I'm simply asked for mentorship advice. Other times, students need a helping hand as they navigate their messy lives. Amidst all this chaos, I find joy in giving students a chance to succeed. For example, I'm always happy to do any of the following for a student: Request their feedbackExtend an assignment due dateMeet outside of class to discuss workGive a perspective on matters outside the courseWrite a recommendation letter And, I have done all of these things and more. Hell, I don't even care about attendance. I treat students like adults, and I believe they should be able to make whatever decision they think is best for them. Unsurprisingly, when schools started shutting down due to COVID-19, I became even more lax in my requirements. At a certain point, I gave up on due dates and just let students turn in assignments as they got them done. Of course, the old adage "You give an inch, they'll take a mile" is true to some extent. I always like to assume the best in people, but some people aren't the best. In the next section, we'll take a look at how one of my students, Chris, found a way to complain despite my best efforts. So. Many. Emails. No matter how hard I try to grow and improve as an instructor, I always seem to get a student that refuses to acknowledge my efforts. Of course, that's fine by me; I can't please everyone. That said, it does become a bit frustrating because I don't enjoy when someone takes advantage of me. Let me introduce Chris, a student who sent me 15 unprompted emails throughout the semester. It all started with an email which read: I won't make it to lecture today, I have a Physics midterm at CSCC today during this time.Chris, February 13, 2020 And, ended with him begging for points on the final quiz. To summarize what that sort of looked like on my end, here's a nice list: 3 emails asking for an extension on a homework assignment with a strict deadline3 emails asking for an extension on a project (there are 11 projects)2 emails clarifying a homework assignment2 emails updating me on their late assignment progress2 emails about missing class1 email asking me to "pregrade" an assignment (I didn't write this post)1 email asking for a link that was on the course website1 email asking for a retry on a quiz1 email begging for points back on an old homework1 email begging for points back on an old project1 email begging for points back on an old midterm1 email complaining about their final grade Before anyone goes totaling up these values, I found that some emails hit multiple categories. For example, some of the emails asked for multiple extensions. Regardless of the circumstance, I placed an email in as many categories as it fit. At any rate, despite all of these emails, I wasn't really all that irritated with this student until the end of the semester. In this next section, we'll take a look at the straw that broke the camel's back. The Last Straw Over the course of the semester, I was happy to accommodate Chris (and any student, frankly). Sure, they were a bit whiney at times, but I'm aware of the pressure of university. It's not their fault that failing could be terrible news for their financial future. I always try to keep that in the back of my mind. Of course, it's particularly bad students like Chris that make me occasionally forgo any support. Specifically, this happened when Chris decided to start begging for points at the end of the semester after I had already announced that I wouldn't be regrading assignments. Take a look: I know you just sent out an announcement on Carmen, but this email was already in the works so I thought why not just send it anyways.Can you take a look at my test cases on Project 10? I only received partial extra credit for my test cases, I feel like my test cases reflect any boundaries that would arise and the grader ([Insert Grader Name]) didn’t agree. I tried to resolve it with her but we weren’t able to come to a resolution. I sent her this as well:- You docked a point for where I place the generated files, I disagree with your analysis and I’ll reference the project instructions verbatim: “Therefore, the program shall respect the user input as being the complete relative or absolute path as the name of the input file, or the name of a folder, and will not augment the given path in any way, e.g., it will not supply its own filename extension." Thus the assumption that it is up to the user executing the program to make sure that they meet that condition, not me the implementer.TLDR; I got docked a point on project 10 because I followed directions verbatim according to the instructions.One more thing, this is a longshot because of how long ago this was but I’ll ask anyways, so I went way back and looked at Midterm 1 at this question:[Insert Picture of Exam]My answer:[Insert Picture of Solution]And here is that exact implementation, the only error was printing the wrong sign, everything else functionality wise works exactly to the specification. I feel as if this should be a -1 thing instead of a -3 thing.[Insert Screenshot of Code]Chris, April 27, 2020 @ 10:18 PM Obviously, this email really irritated me because Chris was pulling the old "Mom said no. I guess I'll ask dad" bit. Not only is this super childish, but it attempts to pit me against my own team. Naturally, I responded as follows: In terms of grading disputes, I tend to trust my graders. That said, I doubt [Insert Grader's Name Here] (who I copied on this email) would be opposed to taking a second look or at least providing some context for the decision. As for the exam comment, I would argue it is a bit too late to ask for regrades. That said, this is one of those scenarios where I never gave a hard deadline for regrades (at least in writing) beyond the message I sent out yesterday in Carmen. First thing I'll say about exam grades is that I use [Insert Boss's Name Here] rubric. As a result, different aspects of programming questions are worth different points. Sometimes things like this are worth more because we believe they're important aspects of the problem (i.e. they address certain learning outcomes). That said, reread the question. The requirements aren't about even/odd. They're about positive and negative: > After reading each integer, the program outputs a line of +’s or a line of -‘s depending on whether the number is positive or negative.Flipping the conditions won't fix this behavior. The conditions themselves have to change at the bare minimum. In its current state, this program would require quite a bit of rework. By the time the loop is executed, the positive/negative information is lost, so it's impossible to print the right result. In other words, there needs to be some character/boolean variable to store that state. As a result, I think the score is justified.Jeremy Grifski, April 28, 2020 @ 1:41 PM Of course, while all this is going on, my grader informs me that this student had been rude to her (not her words; just something I noticed in Chris's email she forwarded me)—which makes his response to me particularly rich: Okay that’s fair.Also, the last thing I want to do is brew any bad blood between myself and you or any of the graders, I’m so dangerously close to a B- in this class so I really just have to open a discussion for every point I that I can, I’d hate not to get into the major over 1 or 2 points. I think that instructions on Project 10 were contradictory and I was trying to understand where I went wrong in understanding them.Thank you both for entertaining my dialogue, you have both been very understanding this semester and I really do appreciate it.Chris, April 28, 2020 @ 1:47 PM At this point, I had assumed they felt genuinely sorry, so I responded as follows: I totally understand. That said, the process is sort of out of your hands at this point. I’ve looked at your grade, and you’re a decent candidate for a round up (~.5% away). Of course, no grade adjustments have been made yet, so it’s possible you could end up with a B- without any rounding at all. Also, there are two projects outstanding, so you may just end up with a B- without any additional work on anyone’s part. At any rate, we aren’t trying to be malicious in our grading process. We grade hard because we believe you need to know this stuff (at least to get you through software 2). Id argue it would be worse to let you through and force you to struggle (not saying you would).That said, I’ll reiterate that you’re dangerously close to a B-, so that likely constitutes little grading errors like you mentioned. We account for this when we give final grades, so you can fully expect to get the benefit of the doubt. Jeremy Grifski, April 28, 2020 @ 2:14 PM At this point, I never received a response, so I had assumed that Chris learned their lesson. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. In the next section, we'll take a look at the email that prompted this whole rant. Enough Manipulation At the end of the semester, I finished up grades, got them approved by my boss, and submitted them just like I do every semester. And, just like every semester, I get at least one student who complains about their final grade. This semester was no different. Roughly around the time I posted final grades, I received the following strongly worded email from Chris: I’m disappointed we didn’t have the opportunity to look at how Quiz 5 was graded… you said we were going to have 24 hours after the results were released and that never happened. Especially with what happened on Quiz 4, this is especially upsetting.I did not receive a grade on Homework 14, I know I completed that 100% correctly so assuming I would receive a 2/2 that puts me at an 80.90%I’m also disappointed with my final grade in the class, I don’t think my work and knowledge reflect a B-. Being 2.1% away from a B, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for grades to be curved considering the multiple instances where I have disagreed with the graders over subjectivity. The GPA hit from a B- (2.3 grade points per credit) versus a B (2.7 grade points per credit) are massive and have absolutely negatively impacted my chances to get into the major.Grades are in Buckeyelink at this point but I hope there’s something to be done, overall I’m frustrated that we didn’t have the opportunity to look at Quiz 5 and frustrated that my final grade did not take into account that there definitely was a possibility where I incorrectly lost a point or two on a project (Especially Project 10).Chris, May 1, 2020 @ 6:58 PM At this point, I was really upset with this email. Keep in mind that I had planned to take the month of May off, and this email was holding me back from sweet bliss. In a fit of frustration, I began crafting the masterpiece that opened this article. After nearly an hour of writing and editing that email, I received a follow-up from Chris: Regardless if anything can be done, I really do appreciate the kindness that you’ve shown me and everyone else throughout the course.We all hear horror stories about Software 1, you made it bearable and give me hope for the CSE department. I hope other professors can learn from the empathy and support that you provided to us throughout the semester.Chris, May 1, 2020 @ 7:54 PM The dramatic change in tone between these emails took me completely off guard. It was at that moment that I realized I was being emotionally manipulated, so I decided this student wasn't even worth my time. Instead, I sent them the following pair of sentences: I have updated the quiz, so you can now see it.I understand the frustration, but I am unlikely to be able to update any grades at this point as [Insert Boss Here] has already signed off on themJeremy Grifski, May 1, 2020 @ 7:59 PM Naturally, less than 10 minutes later, I received the following angry email: Question 2:Can you explain how Question 2 on Quiz 5 is wrong?@ensures #x = x + yWould surely mean that the current value of X, let’s say 10… will be added to the current value of Y, let’s say 6… equaling 16, which I answered.How is the answer 4?Question 3:How is this wrong, here’s the contract that we were given:int x = 2, y = 8, z = 10;/** * @updates x, y, z * @maintains x + y = #z * @decreases z */We were asked: What are possible values of the variables at the end of this code fragment?I answered: x = 13, y = -3, z = 0 and got it wrong…How is (x) 13 + (y) -3 not equal to (z) 10? This maintains the contract of: @maintains x + y = #zChris, May 1, 2020 @ 8:07 PM This kid didn't even take the time to critically think about the answers for even a second. In fact, they were so certain they were right, they put together this angry email in under 10 minutes. As a the petty man that I am, I made them wait two days for a response: For question 2, that's not quite how the ensures reads. #x indicates the value of x that was passed into the function. In that case, the equation reads 10 = x + y. Since we know y doesn't change due to the lack of an explicit parameter mode, we can read this equation as 10 = x + 6. Therefore, x has to be 4. #z refers to whatever z was going into the loop. Since we know z decreases, that automatically eliminates any answer where z is > 10. For the answer where z = 10, that can't be true because x and y start at 8 and 2 which doesn't break the loop. From there, it's a matter of checking which answers have an x and y that break the loop. The answer where z is 0 fails. Therefore, it has to be the answer where z is 5.Jeremy Grifski, May 3, 2020 @ 2:48 PM Of course, the details don't really matter. All that matters is I never heard from this student again (except in my course evaluations). Talk about a nightmare of a student. Looking Back Now that it's been over a month since I chatted with Chris last, I realize that this situation was just as annoying as I remember. I figured I wouldn't have been nearly as frustrated with time, but this was clearly a bad student. I'll definitely have to keep an eye out for behaviors like theirs in the future. In the meantime, I might as well take a moment to asks for your support. Since you're here, you're already a Patron. Thanks for the help! If you want to go the extra mile, check out my list of ways to grow the site to see if there's anything else that might interest you. Otherwise, check out some of these related posts: Working With Challenging College StudentsDealing With Difficult College Students Once again, thanks for stopping by! Take care and see you next time.