100 Most Irritating Things Students Do in Class.

1. i have one student like this, he always refers back to what other students' say, citing them sarcastically, using air quotes. and he always thinks he has The Answer--and looks at me as though i'm going to nod in acknowledgment.

― by another name (amateurist),

2. I'm still scarred by the debate with a student last week, who kept insisting that Hamlet was "obviously" manic-depressive, then kept triumphantly looking around the class, as if affixing this label explained everything.

you could at least have edited out my useless apostrophe.

although as a teacher i have to say the most annoying thing is when they are texting on their cell phones/iphones/whatever and have it sort of tucked into their hoodie as though i can't see them.

though this does provide a golden opportunity to psych them out by nonchalantly saying, "tom, will you put your phone away" as you are turned away from them, writing something on the board.

do u ever call your students MISTER or MISS such-and-such

you could at least have edited out my useless apostrophe.

ah, but then I would have qualified for "100 Most Irritating Things Professors Do in Class"

do u ever call your students MISTER or MISS such-and-such

I look and AM too young to get away it. I mean, I have to dress in shirt and tie the first week so they don't think I'm a fellow student -- as they did when I was a graduate student.

does any kind of school other than law school do mister and miss? maybe med school

i have a lot of things to list but i don't want to remember school right now

i mean like in a sarcastic way when u want to put them on the spot

3. Stretch while you're in the middle of asking a question, so that you think they're raising their hand.

4. Pluck their eyebrows using a phone as a mirror.

5. Tell me elaborate lies about why they didn't do their homework.

6. Plagiarize as if I don't know how to use Google.

could go on and on and on

The over-the-top laughter at a private joke, and dramatic entrances into the room that they would like you to think are just part of their 'zany', devil-may-care personality. Especially with the 8th/9th grade girls, who are starting to like the idea of getting the attention of an entire room while pretending that they don't care. It kind of trickles over to the 14 year olds at the mall persona, where suddenly everything that your friends say is the most hysterical thing you've ever heard.

I haven't taught in a classroom for more than 10 years but this still drives me crazy!

I told my wife (former professor) about this thread and she asked me to pass this one along.

7. Ask a question, the answer to which was in what you just said.

8. emailing me with details of how sick they are why have to miss class. dude, you're an adult, miss class if you want to, what do you want me to do about it?

wait, that's not IN class. sorry. start at 8 again folks.

9. After they've explained why they've missed class they ask, to show how much they care, what they missed. It's in the syllabus, fool.

8. emailing me with details of how sick they are why have to miss class. dude, you're an adult, miss class if you want to, what do you want me to do about it?

― by another name (amateurist), Monday, February 15, 2010 7:21 PM (43 seconds ago) Bookmark

tbf most standard-ish attendance policies want you to email the prof before class explaining that you won't be there

9. After they've explained why they've missed class they ask, to show how much they care, what they missed. It's in the syllabus, fool.

― Inculcate a spirit of serfdom in children (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, February 15, 2010 7:22 PM (9 seconds ago) Bookmark

tbf they're probably wondering in earnest if there was any interesting in-class discussion that they've missed out on.

Yes, but they and I both know that there's nothing we can do reconstruct the debate, especially after you've spelled out your absence/lateness policy in your syllabus.

call all destroyer: no. just no.

xpost

in any event, re. being sick, i know they are lying half of the time.

especially when, a few days before a paper is due, suddenly everybody's aunt and uncle and grandma starts dying.

The over-the-top laughter at a private joke, and dramatic entrances into the room that they would like you to think are just part of their 'zany', devil-may-care personality. Especially with the 8th/9th grade girls, who are starting to like the idea of getting the attention of an entire room while pretending that they don't care. It kind of trickles over to the 14 year olds at the mall persona, where suddenly everything that your friends say is the most hysterical thing you've ever heard.

Yes! Although I am not a teacher, I ride the subway a lot. UGH, teenagers.

oh, c'mon, they're teenagers. it's cute.

lol maybe you are some rad professor who accepts non-attendance for what it is but i assure you most students are going to give you the courtesey email no matter what, i don't think it's really "irritating"

and alfred--i've waited a long time for the professor who could summarize in-class content in the way you describe; i assume i'll keep waiting.

btw what do you guys think of this: a class last wednesday was snowed out. professor scheduled a makeup session for saturday from 2-5 which i did not attend. i'm kind of of the opinion that the prof should've collapsed two lessons into one rather than schedule a makeup at a time that's not really convenient at all, but i can see both sides.

wait kids really text IN CLASS now? jesus i could never be a teacher.

cad i think it depends of it's an attendance-mandatory class or not? all but maybe three of my lecture classes (not including labs) didn't have mandatory attendance, so if i were a prof i'd prob be like "uh, ok don't care" if i got all those emails

cad my professors posted online lectures for the classes we missed on wednesday - ime that's usually been standard. that or "read the notes and the chapter on your own time, i'm moving on"

attendance-mandatory class

waht

10. Interrupt me to ask a question that would have been answered shortly if they HAD NOT INTERRUPTED ME.

profs that schedule makeup classes are retarded

they often don't have a choice -- there are regulations that determine contact hours at some schools

i know :(

I usually allow two unexcused absences; I perform a lot of group work.

yeah k3v if it's a big lecture i'm not going to notify but like in the grad program i'm in now class is 30, tops. so i'm going to email if i can't come, no matter what the reason. this has always been met by a polite "thanks for letting me know," fwiw.

like i'm not sure if the actual given reason matters (maybe i'm sick, maybe i just have tickets to something) but i think saying you're not going to be there is just courtesy.

alfred if i were in your class i would be absent no more than once; promise.

and alfred--i've waited a long time for the professor who could summarize in-class content in the way you describe; i assume i'll keep waiting.

Yeah, but, see, my classes are capped at 29 students, so I can separate the fools from the bright ones. If one of the latter approach me after an absence I'll usually summarize the class, expecting h/she will ask pithy questions. It's the dumb asses looking for brownie points for whom I have no patience.

well i'm thinking of one guy i had who worked half the week at a think tank and flew to dc every wednesday night and back on sunday. he would sometimes (like 6 times over the semester) have to miss wednesday classes for meetings and we would have to make them up by having double-long classes. RUDE

also i would say a reason for being out if i knew ahead of time and hope that didn't annoy the professor geez

alfred if i were in your class i would be absent no more than once; promise.

You'd be the one I'd invite for coffee afterwards!

profs/teachers itt, what do you teach?

Intro comp and lit classes.

wait--i'm not paid to tutor my students. why should i spend 30 minutes getting you "up to date" if you missed class (as if such a thing could even be done)? it's your responsibility to get notes from another student.

office hours?

the problem w/ the emails is that the message isn't solely or even primarily "as a courtesy i wanted to let you know i won't be there" but "listen isn't my excuse amazing oh please don't actually hold me accountable to the attendance policy written on the syllabus that doesn't make a distinction b/t excused and unexcused absences."

yes, they can come to office hours, but that's not what they want (evidenced by how few actually show up). they want me to tell them, "no, you didn't miss anything important" (!!) or "let me spend 60 minutes typing you up a summary of our discussion today" (!!).

wait--i'm not paid to tutor my students. why should i spend 30 minutes getting you "up to date" if you missed class (as if such a thing could even be done)? it's your responsibility to get notes from another student.

― by another name (amateurist), Monday, February 15, 2010 8:03 PM (54 seconds ago) Bookmark

so you actively resent talking to your students outside of class time? harsh.

i mean i'm sorry your students are shitty, i guess

no, i love talking to students. but at the rate they are absent (for being "sick" and for being sick) i would be spending 40 hours/week getting them "up to date." if you want to talk about the ideas in class, the papers, the exam, whatever, cool, i'm game. if you want a synopsis of the section you missed, sorry, that's really not my job.

are you folks kidding?

i mean this is really standard stuff. i even went to a liberal arts college and knew not to ask professors to fill me in on what i'd missed.

xpost

Huh. I was toned out of my skull for aprox 75% of my undergrad courses. I even lived the whole "study high, take the test high" philosohy.

http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e260/EyEcarumba/body_builder_chick_8.jpg

jenny, the college years

fart

this was a good trehad im glad irea di t

recently discovered:

after allowing the use of laptops again, one guy in the back will attempt to google/look up in a dictionary the answer to the questions I pose in class. wtg, you disgusting savage

I mean, can someone walk me through the thought process here? you're not getting brownie points cause it's blatantly obvious to everyone what you're doing, in fact you're annoying the shit out of me by doing so...you're not proving that you know the answer...are you big upping yourself to your friends, in some sort of ha-ha I'm smarter than the prof move? but why should they be impressed by your ability to google an answer to a relatively simple question?

ugh

Maybe this just makes sense to me b/c I was an English major, but why ask a question that can just be googled?

I'm teaching ESL, so I'm basically testing their language ability

oh yeah. weird move to google the answer then.

I mean, can someone walk me through the thought process here?

i think the point is that the thought process is somewhat... arrested.

Why not call him out on it?

snoring

So today in a lecture of about 50 there was a kid with a laptop and a 100-CD SPINDLE OF CD-RS on his desk and he was burning a ton of cds, like, in class. The professor told him to stop, and as he was putting them away he dropped the spindle of cds. Major lulz.

I am going to try my hardest to write you this email in response to the recent grade received on my paper, without reflecting the anger that I feel as a result. I would like to first express my respect for you and every other teacher that has placed their energy into educating me and my peers, as we all know that teachers are often the unappreciated foundation of our future. However, I must express a slight amount of disrespect, as I do not agree with your perception of my paper one bit. I recently read an article about Bill Gates and the steps he took as he dropped out of Harvard. What I found so interesting was that he had the confidence to leave his schooling behind for the other students that really needed it, as he realized that he had more important things to accomplish in life than to argue with teachers about grades on papers, as we all now know what thoughts he had storming in his mind.

You commented that I had probably the best example, to the assigned question, out of all the students participating. However, you also said that I did not complete the assignment as instructed, because I did not explain with the proper support from the text book literature pertaining to the two gentlemen of which the entire assignment pertained to. I beg to differ on your opinion of my interpretation of the assignment. Proffessor, what you fail to realize is that my story explains the topic in so much detail, that being specific is not in my nature as a writer, or a mathotical student. You see if I was to follow the path as the other students, I would have never gained the respect and admiration of my past teachers. What you failed to realize is that I understand the topic in greater depth than any of the other students. So much so, that I had a smile on my face writing this paper knowing that only an A student would understand my direction. The fact that I knew the topic so thouroughly, that I was able to visualize an event in history that explained the different mindsets of the two philosophers at hand, that it needed no explanation, besides an in depth detailed visual summary of a World War 2 event, that created an anaoly of the two philosopys that needed no explanation. You see the leaders of the two countries show the details that separate their ideology creating a mirror reflection of Mills and Rousseaus’s philosophys with regards to social justice. How ironic is it that justice is not seen by the instructor of a class about the exact topic that leads me to this email.

The paper is so methodically written, that it needs no explaniation. I am so disappointed that you do not understand or see that. Do you seriously think that I don’t understand the topic inside and out? You are so mistaken, as I understood it enough to come up with an example that so vividly creates a perfect analogy to the difference between Mills and Rousseau. That paper is written to perfection whether you understand it or not! The leaders of our country and Japan created a stamp in history that is flawed just as any theory of justice by anyone will never be perfect. Don’t you get it Professor? How do you not see that the government morals and ideas of the U.S. and Japan can directly reflect the differences between Mills and Rousseau? It is clear as day to any person that understands good writing. I am an A student and that is an A paper, and always will be to me. I read some of the other students papers, and to me they were nonsense written to fill pages. I will apologize for this email if you can produce one paper written for this assignment that can come close to competing with the ideas in my paper. I can only dream of having someone like Bill Gates give me advice for this situation. But I will still go on to follow the path that God has paved for me regardless of your opinion, because I already had the guideness I needed to help me visualize my purpose. I want my grade changed, and I am sorry if I offend you by this email, but I put my heart and sole into my education and I believe in myself even if you don’t.

via

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/03/11/the-status-of-higher-education-in-2010-an-empty-bottle-of-jack-daniels-and-the-greatest-student-email-ever-written/

I put my heart and sole into my education

being specific is not in my nature as a writer, or a mathotical student

What you failed to realize is that I understand the topic in greater depth than any of the other students. So much so, that I had a smile on my face writing this paper knowing that only an A student would understand my direction. The fact that I knew the topic so thouroughly, that I was able to visualize an event in history that explained the different mindsets of the two philosophers at hand, that it needed no explanation, besides an in depth detailed visual summary of a World War 2 event, that created an anaoly of the two philosopys that needed no explanation.

so glad i'm not in school anymore

What you failed to realize What I failed to demonstrate.

fixed

i actually get version of that in office hours:

"but i KNOW this material"

"you don't mention any of these concepts in your essay"

I am sorry if I offend you by this email, but I put my heart and sole into my education and I believe in myself even if you don’t.

Not sure if the misspelling or the laughably insincere "apology" is the icing on the cake

on a more positive note, today my very old (70+) russian student told me that he did not enjoy "the proposal" because it was "very very boring." i asked him, "did you think it was stupid?" and he replied, "no, not stupid. boring. too much boring. man and woman, they have love, they work, they no love. too much boring. boring."

he did enjoy "it's complicated" and is looking forward to "everybody's fine starring robert de niro"

I'd be shocked if the word "mathotical" doesn't appear somewhere in the wu-tang canon.

when he is not talking about the US missiles in poland, he is talking about comedies
he also has taken my class three times (this is his fourth) and he doesn't hesitate to tell me what he likes or dislikes about each time he takes it.

the difference is that he does not use the word mathotical

"he also has taken my class three times (this is his fourth)"

--does this mean he flunked three times?

oh, my saturday class is adult ed. there's no flunking unless they don't show up or show absolutely no progress. i've taught this class 3x a year for almost 5 years, so he has had a lot of chances to disappear, then re-register at the same level. also, he loves me. i know this because he stands about 5 inches from me whenever he corners me to talk about missiles or movies.

post to ILX

mention that they would be 'happy' with a B+

Amanda, I never saw your Russian student stories but they're great. He's talking in a gruff Russian accent in my head, totally.

haha he wants to take my class AGAIN! can you believe that? i want to convince him to start a blog with his movie reviews. he loves computers and is pretty web-savvy, it wouldn't be too far-fetched. he's always sending me weird musical e-cards.

A blog! A blog! If he writes it, I will read it. And maybe he and Dr Morbius can become best friends.

He sounds bored, tbh, and maybe lonely? He must really enjoy getting out and going to school and having lots more opportunities to be grumpy about things.

Yeah, he's like 80. I have three students like that. Two Russians and one Nigerian. They're all men in their 70s/80s and pretty much say the same things on repeat. The Nigerian guy was a real sport when we went on our field trip, though -- he walked for quite a while (with the rest of us) to get to the bus when the train was suddenly not operating. He didn't seem to mind the detour as much as some of the ladies did.

ilikemissilesandmovies.blogspot.com might not be taken...

It is way way annoying when students cry for "losing" ONE round of a game where there isn't really a win/lose structure. They will meld rules of other games into the game I'm teaching them and they get super upset when it turns out my game is different. This is actually kind of cool to think about later but while it's happening and there are 4 or 5 sobbing children crowded around you it's pretty irritating. Well actually my games aren't about winning and losing but you can die in some of them, hypothetically, for one round. I guess this could be upsetting to a 6 year old.

Funniest thing kids do in class? fart.

After determining that the majority of my students in Class A are also going to be in Class B this summer, I bring in the textbook for Class B and I show everybody what it's called and I write the name on the board and then I do it AGAIN during the following class meeting to make sure that everybody knows what the book is and can use the six week break between terms to procure the book as cheaply as possible and when three students fail to show up on the first day of Class B, I email them the syllabus and the first assignment because their grades are based mostly on an ability to show up for class and turn in assignments in a timely fashion, and one of those three students, who was also in Class A and who was present on the days that I told them what book to buy, emails me to tell me that she doesn't have the book yet because of a "credit card info" problem and to ask what she should do about the homework.

Come the hell on.

tell her to call the waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahmbulance

I told her that if I were her, I would contact someone else in the class or see if I could get the book out of the library to complete the assignment on time, then I wished her luck.

I really hope she manages to get it together because I like her a lot and she's one of my smarter students and this is exactly the kind of half-assed bullshit I would have pulled whilst an undergrad, so it will make me v. unhappy to fail her. But damn.

2. I'm still scarred by the debate with a student last week, who kept insisting that Hamlet was "obviously" manic-depressive, then kept triumphantly looking around the class, as if affixing this label explained everything.

these types of students really bring a lot of flavor to class discussions imo

Slightly paraphrased exchange:

Student: Do you think we could meet for lunch so I can discuss the profession to which you belong and into which I hope to gain entry?
Jenny: Sure. If you can come downtown, we can meet on Monday. How does noon sound?
Student: Well, I'm unemployed now and I like to sleep in, so 2 would be better.
Jenny: That's a little late for lunch, but I can do 1.
Student: Okay, great! I'll probably be late though because I'm always late.
Jenny: ...

That is a winning attitude!

My least favorite current student is this young man who likes to do the following when asking me a question: get out of his chair, sneak up behind wherever I am, poke my neck and say, "Miss? Miss?" When I told him he had to sit in his seat & wait like everyone else was nice enough to do, he started crying. :-/

BTW this is a college student.

um, what? oh dear.

does he have an advisor? maybe you could find out if he has any behavioral disorders from that person?

does he wear diapers?

Whoa, yeah. Something is... amiss there.

Note: I did not have high hopes, but the student was on time!

I always wondered if you set low expectations & then acted normal, if that made you look better than just acting normal. Thanks to this story about Jenny's student I am thinking: no.

i just had a hilarious memory of the student who called me "girlfriend" once.
he only did that once because i said I AM NOT YOUR GIRLFRIEND, I AM YOUR TEACHER

he was ok other than that

I'd just like to thank this thread for making me appreciate my students: slow, sometimes, can't spell, and often can't use words properly, but nearly all of them are polite and friendly.