Apologies about the lack of posting. The term has caught up with me yet again. I WILL finish the Pages to a PhD series, but most likely after the term has ended. I am currently drowning in grading, papers, readings, and exams.

But first a brief rant about a particularly bad response TA's sometimes get to bad grades.

So one of the requirements for the class I TA (ie grade) for this term is to write a term paper. I won't go into details, but suffice it to say that this young man didn't read the directions closely. He didn't do half of the requirements, so I gave him a D (which I thought was rather generous) because he met every other requirement and it was a thoughtful paper. I had planned to email the prof and hopefully let the kid rewrite (everyone makes mistakes, especially freshmen who aren't used to being accountable), but while I'm still entering grades I get an email.

Usually we describe these as tear stained emails, but this one was worse. This was the "I'm a belligerent 18yo male who is trying to 'intimidate' you into changing my grade by telling the teacher what you did" email. My initial response is to say, "Motherf***er, that crap didn't work for guys my own age when I was 18. What the hell makes you think it's gonna work now that I'm 26 and have TA-ed for 4 years?"

Thank God for FPU. I carbon copied the prof and pointed the kid to the directions, and told him I had informed the prof of his situation and would let him know if anything changed.

I really don't get the sense of entitlement these kids seem to feel, nor do I have any clue about how to communicate to them that an education is something you earn, not pay for.

Back to it!

Peace, Love, and Tunes,

Mac.