The Importance of Getting Summers Off

Recently, I had to hold myself back from sending a nasty email to a student, and now I’m reminded of the importance of getting summers off. Without them, we’d see a lot more teachers crashing out.

A Quick Overview of My Teaching Journey
I Need Time Off
The Stages of Grief
The Email I Never Sent
So Yeah, Summers Are Important

A Quick Overview of My Teaching Journey

If I were to chart out my teaching journey, I’d have about 8 years of teaching experience at this point. In that time, I’ve gone from teaching a single section of a programming course each semester to balancing three sections a semester plus additional duties.

To put this into perspective, I just wrapped up maybe my 14th semester of teaching. To be honest, I’ve lost count, so that’s my best estimate. After all, I took a year off to do research, so seven years times two seems like a reasonable estimate.

Anyway, my semester ended somewhat abruptly between the mess that was the Canvas hack and traveling to Japan for my second iteration of a study abroad program. Needless to say, I’m burnt out and looking forward to using this summer to recoup.

After all, once fall hits, I’ll be juggling two kids, a new mentorship program, three classes, and my Japanese classes. I’m certainly going to say “no” to a lot this year, so I can hold onto some semblance of sanity.

I Need Time Off

I think a lot of people look at the life of an academic as one of luxury. It’s a common talking point against teachers of all kinds as there’s this general belief that we don’t deserve summers off. And perhaps other jobs are harder, but given the role educators serve, I don’t think you want them burnt out.

I say this because I reached a point near the end of this last semester where I was starting to lose it on students. Overall, they were pretty good this year. Most of my frustrations were actually with other educators.

Yet, there seems to come a time every spring where even my best students start to take out their frustrations on me. After I posted grades in early May, I received emails from maybe 10-20% of my students asking for bumps to their final grade. On one hand, this is a win: I’ve taught my students to advocate for themselves. On the other hand, this is incredibly frustrating. In my class, you get the grade you’ve earned, and I give you ample opportunities to earn the grade you want.

What really pushed me over the edge, however, was a single Rate My Professor review. Against my better judgment, I check RMP somewhat regularly. It’s usually a nice pick-me-up given the next things people say on there, but this time I was getting flooded with negative reviews (the first of their kind).

To be clear, they were joke reviews. One was a bad rating with a very positive description. Another was a bad rating with an equally negative description, though clearly a joke as it referenced my taste in anime.

But then, a genuine negative review made an appearance. It basically said, “Smart guy but unsupportive.” At the point I was at in the semester, this one really hurt. I knew I was less supportive in the past because I was just so busy with moving, taking care of my daughter, and studying Japanese. I had spread myself so thin that it was showing up in my reviews.

The Stages of Grief

Of course, in somewhat comical fashion, this review sent me spiraling down the stages of grief. At first, I was kind of denying that it was a real review. I thought maybe it was another troll.

Then, I got pretty angry. I started to think about how absurd the review was and how I certainly do more than is necessary. Part of me started to even grow frustrated with students more broadly. What happened to resiliency? How is it my fault you can’t succeed where thousands have before you?

This anger snowballed when I finally get around to posting grades for the last section. See, the Canvas hack happened as I was waiting for one of my graders to finish up. That meant I was stuck posting final grades while abroad, not something I wanted to be doing. This kept the frustration flowing.

Once those grades were posted, I got a series of emails from a single student. The first email asked for a roundup. The second email included further begging. Next, they started negotiating for participation points. Then, a few more emails came, not a single one which had a subject line.

As I’m staring at this shotgun blast of “(No subject)” emails, I grow increasingly irritated. As someone who wants to give students every opportunity to succeed, my charitability had completely evaporated. Why wouldn’t you ask for help sooner? Why wait until now to show this level of desperation? Why is it my problem if you fail the class?

The Email I Never Sent

As something like a dozen emails flooded in from this single student over a span of a few days, I eventually lost my patience and drafted a response. See, for context, this student got a D+ and wanted a C- to pass the class. While I generally don’t entertain these kinds of requests, this one was the most egregious. Having been forced to watch them beg for participation points, I just couldn’t take it anymore and wrote the following:

I appreciate you advocating for yourself, but the time for that is over. My philosophy on teaching is that I never want to fail a student that deserved to pass, and I never want to pass a student that deserved to fail. You fall in the latter camp.

The issue is less of the 4% participation and more of the other 27% you’re missing. You easily could have gotten the grade you wanted had you just completed a few more of the homework assignments. The same could be said about the projects, which you could have resubmitted for better grades.

The quality of the work just isn’t there, and I don’t feel comfortable sending you to my peers without key prerequisite software development skills. Likewise, I personally don’t take a lot of stock in exams, so the final exam score is not going to make me more charitable.

If this is going to greatly delay your graduation or cause other issues, you may contact your advisor for your options.

Now, I never sent this email. It’s still sitting in my drafts. However, I wanted to share it here, so folks can see that educators often have to practice a significant degree of restraint. I don’t think it’s fair to send this email, even if everything in it is true.

I mean the student literally tried to play me at the final exam. When they submitted it, they said something like “was it important to fill out the attendance each class because I forgot to do it, but I was here.” I want you to guess how many days they filled out the attendance. The number was 1 in 50, so forgive me for not feeling even a little bit charitable with this student. It doesn’t help their case that I go out of my way to learn student names and therefore pay attention to who comes to my class.

Look, I could go on. They were in a group of three for the projects (where I usually prefer groups of two), and they basically never submitted anything correctly. They always submitted projects using the wrong IDE, and I assume they were old projects from when they took the class before. Likewise, their homework submission were of terrible quality.

Ultimately, we’re talking about somebody who’s best performance was at the buzzer (i.e., an 82% on the final). Otherwise, there was basically zero effort on their part to succeed (i.e., 75% on completion-based homework, 71.75% on projects, 61.25% on midterms, and 0% on participation), and I’m not going to be treated like a ref who calls a penalty late in a game.

So Yeah, Summers Are Important

Now, imagine if I had to work through the summers. I wouldn’t even have thought twice about sending that email. In fact, I probably would get rid of most of my flexible policies. Students would be stuck in an extremely unforgiving setting because I’d go insane otherwise.

Thankfully, I get the summers to step away from the classroom and slowly grow an appreciation for it again. Every summer, I get the chance to rekindle my passion for teaching. I get to go through my materials and make important changes. Without that time, I’m just not sure I would last long in this space.

It’s sad too because teaching is extremely fulfilling. I enjoy being able to help a student build confidence. I enjoy making sure people feel like they belong in the space. I like watching students grow over the course of a semester and even into their careers. It makes me feel proud, like how a parent might feel proud of their child.

Yet, for all the good, I find myself so easily distracted by the bad. One bad student can’t replace the positive feelings from ten good students. It’s like gaming: wins just never feel as good as losses feel bad. Apparently, this is called prospect theory.

So, my solution to this imbalance is time off. It’s just so critically important for maintaining some semblance of objectivity about my skills. Winning teaching awards and getting raises just isn’t enough to offset the harsh emails from students accusing me of grading their exams wrong. I am certain that dealing with this kind of stuff all year would completely destroy my passion for the field, and I’d grow into a jaded mess.

That’s why I am so excited to spend this summer with my wife and kid. It’s already nearing the end of May, but I’m happy to be home and away from the classroom. By the time I’m talking about teaching again, I’ll be refreshed and ready to go! I wish that for all my educator peers.

And whether you’re an educator or not, I’d love for you to stick around a bit longer. Here are some relevant articles that I handpicked for the folks reading this piece:

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