It's the most! wonderful time! of the year!

Not because of the holidays. Not because I get to get out of LargeUtown for a week.

Nope. Folks, this is the most wonderful time of the year because today the undergrads have left LargeUtown, and they won't be back for 4 weeks!

Say it with me now: "woohooooo!!!"

No more dodging jaywalking pedestrians as I try to locate a parking spot.

No more playing avoid-touching-the-undergrad on the bus. (Duh, 'cause they're a little smelly and sticky. Seriously. There's this one freshman that always smells like bacon. Ugh)

No more averting my eyes from the PDA at the gym.



I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season (and for those of you at schools that are more similar to LargeU than TinyCollege, I hope you are enjoying your undergradless season, as well!!)

Proctoring

Things I should have done during my 3 hours of proctoring this morning:

- written up my Christmas letter and addressed Christmas cards

- caught up on literature

- written the key for the final

- written my year-end report for The Boss

- applied for another teaching position



Things I actually did during my 3 hours of proctoring this morning:

- semi prepared for my phone interview scheduled for tomorrow

- spent a sick amount of time on Facebook

- finished up grading (that was a good thing!)

- stared blankly at my students staring blankly at their exams


Okay, so I guess I didn't COMPLETELY waste the last three hours of my life. I will tell you this: I haven't been bored in a long time, but today I was ready to stab my eyes out. I wonder what I would have done without wireless???

An open letter to LargeU undergrads

Dear LargeU undergrads,

I understand that it is cold. I also understand that you have more hormones coursing through your veins than your 100 lb bodies can handle. And I do understand that the combination of these two conditions make you feel the need to paw your significant other 24-7.

But you should remember that there are good times to touch one another and there are bad times to touch one other.

Some places where you should not be touching (you might notice that there are all in public, which is where the term "public displays of affection" came from):

- the running track at the gym

- the bus, during my 20 minute ride home

- the hallway of my building, while you wait for office hours

- the grass on the main quad

- my classroom



Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

Sincerely,

Unbalanced Reaction

Hypothetical situation

Here's a hypothetical situation for you. ('cause I would never write about my students. No, never)

Let's say you're an undergrad.

Let's say that you aren't doing so well in a class, and are on thin ice with your TA because of a recent cheating incident.

So you decide to make an appointment with your TA (on a Friday, at 5 pm, no less) in order to go over the last assignment of the semester (wow, you sure are lucky to have such an amazing TA!!!).

Now, do you really think it's going to impress your TA if you decide to skip class the same day of the meeting?




(No more classes this semester! As my students would say, "woot, woot!")

Cheaters never win (against me!)

Recently, my students had to turn in a one-page paper covering a particular topic related to the class. Unfortunately, one of my students decided to blatantly copy from two sources without any citations.

This isn't the first time that plagiarism has been an issue for one of my undergrads. My first year here, four out of 100 of my students failed another general science class because they improperly cited sources. In their case, each had directly taken text out of a source and then cited it, but omitted the quotation marks. All claimed that they were taught that that was okay in high school.

Now freshmen I can sort of understand. But upper level students? The problem with LargeU (and likely many other "R1" type schools) is that the science undergrads often leave their humanities courses (not that they have to take that many) until their last two semesters, and the science classes have very few, if any, written assignments--even some of the laboratory courses don't require written lab reports!

Coming from TinyCollege, which is a little-known liberal arts school, I find this shocking. Even my crappy science courses at TinyCollege required various written reports, summaries of current literature, etc. Hell, the tests often had short answer / essay questions requiring a demonstration of actual thought!

At any rate, I took this recent plagiarism issue as an opportunity to meet with the student and go over proper citations, etc. I could have filed paperwork to get a note in his file, fail him, etc., but I think the tears that welled in his eyes (and came very close to spilling over...UGH!) throughout our 30 minute meeting was punishment enough.


Is plagiarism an issue at your school? Do you think science majors get enough experience writing at these research institutions, that supposedly have stronger science programs than small liberal arts schools?

Rant postponed!

I was all set to write an angry rant about cheating and how prevalent it is among undergrads.... but then CoworkerFriend brought over pizza, we watched America's Most Smartest Model (seriously, you should watch it. Vh1. You will thank me.), and I rediscovered diet dr. pepper+malibu (seriously, you should try it. Yum. You will thank me).


Soooo.....I'm a wee bit buzzed, but I'm sure a lovely rant will appear at some point tomorrow, once I resume my grading (grrrr!!!).



In other news (but equally drink-worthy): I have a defense date!!! 5 months and counting....

If you jaywalk, they will build

Yet another puzzling thing about LargeU that I will never understand (but love): if you jaywalk, you will get a ticket. If you and all your friends jaywalk repeatedly in the same location, "they" will simply paint a new crosswalk.

Over the last few months, random crosswalks have appeared all over LargeU campus, at seemingly random, non-intersection locations. While I'm happy to not be at a ticket risk when dashing between buildings, it does pose a bit of a hazard. LargeU is not a closed campus; in fact, most of the campus is criss-crossed by heavily traveled roads, requiring LargeU undergrads to jump in front of traffic to get to their physics lab.

But...did you know that the crosswalks are more than just bars of paint on the road? No, they are so much more than paint. LargeU crosswalks are actually magic bubbles that protect one from an approaching vehicle. Well, at least that's what you would think if you drove through campus, what with all the undergrads running through crosswalks without pausing....and don't get me started on the bikes.

So these new crosswalks are actually more of a hazard than a help because drivers aren't aware of them (indeed, there are no "yield to pedestrian" signs or other marks, making the white lines extremely hard to see at night), yet undergrads just assume that cars and buses will stop.

At TinyCollege, there was no pedestrian problem because the campus was closed to through traffic. I know it's impractical to shut down all LargeU roads, but surely there is a better solution than just playing "miss-the-undergrad" every time I drive to campus?