How chocolate mocked me

Today my dove chocolate wrapper told me to "treat every day like a Sunday."

I won't go into details about how a Sunday goes for a (visiting) assistant professor. I don't want to deter any of you from this career.

(I'm semi-joking. It's not that bad. Just a lot of prep, a lot of grading, and very, very little sleep. Oh, and N.A. many, many miles away.)


But still. The dove chocolate mocked me. Chocolate mocked me.



Has your chocolate mocked you lately?

What I learned this week

No matter how many times you tell your students, your coworkers, and yourself "it's just allergies," a cold is still a cold.

(Or maybe it's a touch of the flu.)

Even though I can make a dinner out of some mini-snickers and saltine crackers, I can't turn a nasty cold into seasonal allergies. What I *can* do is get through a week of lectures and quizzes by the always-entertaining (for my students) continuous ingestion of dayquil (i.e., CRACK) during waking hours followed by a nyquil nightcap.


Am I just lucky, or is anyone else suffering because their students brought back MORE germs after spring break?

"Always be nice to secretaries. They are the real gatekeepers in the world." ~Anthony D'Angelo

I'm not accustomed to having a departmental secretary at my disposal. Our departmental secretary is supposed to save me time. I should be giving her address labels to type up or photocopying handouts for class.

The primary problem with this setup is that in the time I have to take to explain the required task, I could just complete it myself. Nevermind the fact that on many days, I would rather collate my own worksheets than get stuck in a seemingly unending conversation.

Is there a way for me to balance my need to avoid time sucking busy working with my desire to avoid time sucking, re-explanations of tasks?

How Students Cheat: a youtube sampling

Hearing about yet another cheating incident causes the same reaction as a running sonicator: it makes me feel like my brain membranes are about to explode.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a great article about essay mills. (yes, you need a subscription to access, so VPN thee over to the campus network!)

Many of us teaching in the sciences don't have to worry so much about paper mills as what *awesome* cheating method our students will turn to next. (and if you think you are at a school where cheating is not a problem, then by all means, invite me to your utopia. Yes, I trust my students, but I still make them sign an honor code before taking each exam. And I don't think EVERY student will cheat. I never did. Even my graphing calculator-- see below-- stayed clean.)

I like to call this segment, "how can thee cheat, let me count the ways...from youtube"

- graphing calculators. Graphing calculators should not be used in classes unless you are completely okay with students storing equations on their calculators. And constants. Doesn't matter because you supply equations and constants to them anyways? Okay...are you alright with uploading pages of text from the book?

- ipods (yay. See above for graphing calculators.)

- clear pens. This one is just sad. Pop off the top, slip in a cheat sheet, cover with hand when the prof is looking. A functional cheat sheet! (see youtube video here: best quote around 2:35 "hopefully none of my teachers see this video because that would be really awkward... I don't think any of my teachers go to youtube.")

- water bottles? (See video here to see what I mean) If anyone has actually caught a student doing this, please share. I don't worry about this one, but mostly because our desks are barely big enough for their exam books, let alone a coke bottle.



- cheat sheets??! Seriously, this tutorial has received over 90,000 hits! ...and lots of comments-- which are very fun reading if you are on, say, spring break!


But my favorite youtube cheating clip???





Have you caught a cheater in the classroom lately? With the exception of cell phones and graphing calculators, I think these clips pertain just to high schoolers. But, dear readers, if you have evidence to the contrary, do share!

Mistaken identity

I've gotten used to being mistaken for a student. Whether it's a fellow faculty member objecting to my classroom status ("but you can't be faculty-- you're just a BABY") or the secretary of the international studies department imploring me to study abroad (my delivering in-person of a rec letter was met with a "dear, have you considered our Germany program?"), I've become accustomed to being under-aged.

Now that it is spring break, campus is more absent of undergrads than during Thirsty Thursday shooter specials at the local bar. The only person I saw under the age of 20 on campus today was my department head's six year old daughter.

So the looks I garnered from various humanities professors (when I hiked through "their" side of campus on my way home) were understandable. From what I determined from my facial reading skills (honed during my hours of lecturing freshmen):

- "is it Sunday already?"

- "who let the freshmen back on campus?"

and my favorite:

- "what the EFF are you doing here?"

A question for the masses: skirting opinion

Frequently, female students are advised not to wear skirts at interviews, with the common wisdom that women will never be taken seriously if they look like...well...women.

I never saw women in skirts at grad school interviews, and I prefer pants anyways. Some of my students have come back from medical school interviews to report that everyone-- men and women-- were in matching black suits with muted colors of Oxford shirts.

Can women wear (nonfrumpy) skirts or dresses without being viewed as unprofessional?



(I suspect that many of you will be in support of hot shoes, but what about the rest of the outfit? And if you aren't familiar with Dr. Isis, click thee over there right away)

Public Displays of Affection

I've never been a fan of most public displays of affection. I don't need to see two people swapping tonsil inspections. Awkward stroking makes me uncomfortable. Please don't touch me around coworkers.

But one PDA that I find absolutely adorable is when a couple takes a walk while holding hands.

I don't know if its the fact that TempCollege Village had wonderful, sunshiny weather or the fact that spring is officially not too far away, but today, the hand-holding couples were out in full force. Dozens and dozens of couples walking their dogs and holding hands.

Is hand-holding a big thing in your town? I've gone months without seeing any non-student holding hands. What is up?

"vacation" priorities

My spring "break" is fast approaching.

Am I more excited about:

A. sleeping for more than five consecutive hours

B. cleaning all of my dishes

C. clearing out my DVR

D. getting ahead on lecture prep



It's a tough call.

Cheaters often prosper?

Cheaters often prosper because we let them. Some schools have such ridiculous requirements of paperwork/documentation to pursue a cheater, that it's not worth zinging a student for a few non-cited googlings. Other schools have such lenient plagiarism/cheating policies that faculty don't even bother reporting incidents.

When I was interviewing for jobs, I asked specific questions about how violations of the honor code were judged. Was the punishment policy black and white, or were decisions made on a case-by-case basis? Did my interviewers acknowledge that cheating and plagiarism did in fact occur, or were they blissfully in denial that cheating does and will occur in every type of class, even among the best students.*

Fortunately, TempCollege does not fall into either of those categories. My department is very aware of potential cheating problems, and Head has told me that the department would support me if ever chose to present an incident to the disciplinary board.

I might have to take Head up on the offer this week. This irritates me (particularly since my non-Spring break is fast approaching), but I'll be damned if cheating is going to occur under my "roof."





*Yes, I sound jaded. For good reason: in every single grad class I took, cheating occurred at some level. Blatant copying of problem sets, plagiarism on research papers, graphing calculator cheating, non-approved sources on take-home exams....I'm sure you could add to the list.

A question for the masses: gimme a break

Who needs spring break more: undergrads or faculty members?

Discuss.


(Note that I don't have grad students listed because how many of you grad students actually get a spring break? I know that all I got out of spring break was a break from TAing and a break from undergrads!)