06.24.09
Guess who spoke too soon? ME, THAT’S WHO.
Okay. You know how I was all mellow and feel-good yesterday? Well, fuck that noise.
So, today I go to work to mark the finals for this semester. Let me explain the whole final scenario. Because in this class, one of the skills that I work hard to hammer into students’ heads (think: HULK, SMASH) is critical reading and analysis of other people’s arguments, half of the exam involves requiring them to write an analysis of a reading.
Now, in my day, English exams were leisurely 3-and-a-half-hour affairs that came with what the powers that be were pleased to call “reading time”; which was time between entering the exam room (or rather, “sparrow-infested warehouse,” which is what it was, complete with wobbly desks which the white-coated invigilators would futilely attempt to stablise with little wodges of cardboard they carried in their pockets, and the occasional drop of bird shit on your blue book. One guy I knew just circled the shit and moved on: “as a comment,” he later said) and the time, 30 minutes later, you were allowed to pick up a pen and attempt to write a “very interesting essay on Jane Eyre” or similar. Reading time in literature exams was meant to give you time to find relevant passages, presumably, and you were allowed to write on the question paper during this time, make notes or a plan, get out all your lucky talismans, enjoy a spot of bird-watching, or like my friend Lulu did, read novels as a sure-fire but undetectable way of failing your law exams so that you could say to your QC father, “I tried, I really did.” But I digress.
The modern North American examination contains no such foofery. In and out in 2 hours, in actual heated classrooms, not a sparrow to be seen, wham, bam, thank you ma’am. In such an environment, then, the only reasonable and fair thing to do is to give the essay about which the critique is to be written prior to the exam, which tradition decrees is done in the last class of the semester. It consisted a photocopy of a two-page essay from a book, which cunningly fitted on one side of a piece of paper. The back, I left pristinely white. Sometimes, when I am feeling frisky, I put a lolcat on the back, which both discourages attempts to write on it, and shows me as endearingly hip. This time, I did not.
When I gave out these essays, I offered a series of dead duck style instructions to students. “You may make a few marginal notes, underlinings or highlights on the text. No writing on the back. I don’t want any question that you are trying to sneak a draft of an essay into the exam.” Astute readers will begin to suspect where this is going. All students are law students when it comes to exam instructions, so I also fielded a few questions about “how many words can we write?” to which I responded “a few notes; use your common sense.” The spirit of the law here being that the essay must be composed under exam conditions. This has never been a problem previously, I just want to state for the record. Previous classes of students, hundreds of them, have understood the guidelines perfectly well.
So, exam day comes and goes, and as I mentioned I sat and knit, and did a couple of turns of the room, during which time I confiscated the printed essay of one student who had written out her essay on the back of the paper. I gave her a clean copy, and let the “I didn’t know” go, although, COME ON. At the end of exams, I collected up the answer books, the question papers, and the copies of the essays the students had brought in. Mainly for recycling purposes, little did I know.
So, today, I am marking, and I come across one photocopy which has an essay, written in what must be 6 point font, cut into strips and pasted in the margins, header and footer of the original. WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT. I leaf through the exam booklets, and sure enough, there is one that reproduces said masterpiece of cutting and pasting, word for word. This is not an accident by someone who made an error. This is a clear case of sneakery, because when you are doing a turn about the room and checking whether the students are obviously cheating by bringing in essays they intend to copy out, this one does not look significantly different. You have to get close enough to read 6 point (which in my case is very close indeed) to see what is going on.
Well. In cases like these, I am glad to have a Chair, especially one who happened to be in his office, which office also contained lollipops. “This is certainly ingenious,” he said, with a kind of horrified admiration. We discussed whether the entire essay had, indeed been pasted on and then copied out, which it had, and that I had sanctioned notes but not teeny tiny essays, which I had. “I think you have to call it cheating and give it an F,” he said, still kind of bewildered by the front of it. So, I went back to my office, and took out my feelings by giving the student in question a zero for her efforts.
Then I read the second part of her exam which was an essay on, of all things, her ideas about academic integrity. For srs. I gave that one a bad mark for being a pack of lies, and then further took out my feelings by kicking her participation mark in the taco. I expect a butthurt email about her astonishingly low grade any moment.
Okay. Well, that was unpleasant, but at least it was over, and I got back to grading the rest. Except. There’s another one. Who, instead of the high-tech 6 point and paste tactic, had chosen a more primitive “write incredibly tiny in very pale pencil” strategy. Points for penmanship, sure, but another big fat zero.
I feel violated. I mean, this was a class where students were doing reasonably well, I thought, through their own honest efforts, and now I am second guessing every grade I gave these two. How much of their other work, supposedly completed in in-class labs, had an element of cheatery to it? Vile.
And now, of course, I also have to add another set of instructions to my dead duck file. “Don’t write a teeny tiny essay and paste it in the margins of your handout.”
Sigh. I shall look on the bright side. It’s over. Pass me a G&T.
06.23.09
The boring semester of no drama ends.
Dear Blog, I am sorry for being so horridly neglectful. I blame my students, who for the most part have been polite, hardworking, good-humoured and present. This makes for an awesome class, but it means I lacked the necessary raeg to get me past the fatigue of teaching 4 days a week in order to post. Also, not much happened.
Highlights, then:
I got an evaluation from last semester which was nothing short of a rave. This caused me to faint away, and I did not revive for a day or two. Apparently, there were several people who said “two thumbs up, would learn again” (I had 5 students out of 17 this semester who were repeat offenders, which may account for the overall good vibe in the classroom), and some of these people would even recommend me to their friends.
The incredibly difficult and loud student who complained to me that I wasn’t taking her learning disability into account dropped the class after I asked “what disability?” and then followed up with the Disability Office to find out whether she even had paperwork. (Turns out she does, but didn’t actually request accommodations until after she yelled at me. They kicked her ass.) So that was a win for sanity, although she did have the potential to become another Pineapple. Chalk it up as a loss for entertainment, I guess.
My older student (by which I mean the woman in the class who was my age) was peer pressured by her religion to get married and have 5 kids straight out of high school coped with adversity and me riding her to think harder and managed to get a respectable grade. I didn’t even mind when she hugged me after the exam. Well, not that much. People like that make me grateful that although my mother is a headcase, she is a headcase who believes in education for women, and had no desire to impose her experience of marriage and spawning at age 18 on me.
I was knitting during the exam, a practice I adopted after Sarcastic Bastard once got a comment from students about how when he graded papers he made “scary faces” that caused them to wet themselves with fear. At the end of the exam, one of the students handed in her paper, and then said, a little tentatively, “can I ask you a question?” To which, I replied in the affirmative, thinking she wanted to ask about the final. Instead she said, “I am knitting this scarf in stockinette, and I was wondering if you knew how to stop the edges from curling.” I love that students think I am some kind of learning guru, and font of information on all subjects. Earlier in the semester, I impressed another student by mentioning that I had managed (through some kind of technomancy, no doubt) to get hold of a particular computer game before its advertised release date.
I am apparently utterly mellow. I suspect it will not last. Also, I am twotting desultorily, so I add the feed to this page.
04.16.09
Late-blooming Assholes
We’re a fair way into semester. Actually, we’re in the home stretch, where the light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be the headlight of the oncoming train.
In my classes, major research papers were due a couple weeks ago, and last week, my lit classes had oral presentations. It’s been a quiet semester, apart from the odd narcoleptic and the notes I get once a week from Bossy. I was wondering about this, given how eventful last semester was, but not, I am quick to point out, in an ungrateful way.
So, I’m idly wondering where my quota of assholes hem, “problem students” for the semester has got to, when I get a series of emails from some guy whose name I don’t at all recognize about how he has an essay to hand in. “Wait, whut?” is pretty much my response, but he’s persistent.
If by “persistent” you understand that I mean “an annoying asshole”. First, he turns up randomly at my office 2 hours before any advertised office hour and hassles Sarcastic Bastard for 20 minutes about where am I. Then, he comes to class, and at the end of it, attempts to hassle me about where was I when I wasn’t in my office at 9am on Monday morning. In response to my mild-mannered enquiry about why would I be, he says, “Well, I said I wanted to meet you then, and when you didn’t reply to my email, I assumed you would be there.”
Did you get that, gentle readers? The correct response to receiving no answer to your emails is to assume the answer is “yes”. I am going to get right on to emailing everyone I know (oh, why stop there? I will email everyone I don’t know, too) asking for outrageous favours. When you fail to respond, I will naturally assume this means you are coming over to scrub my floors and dig my veggie garden on the weekend, while I go off to an all-expenses paid trip to the spa, and that you all will be doing any parenting or marking that my spa attendage might cause me to neglect. Also, that those gift certificates from EatSleepKnit are in the mail.
Anyway, back to the annoying asshole (who, and I am sure you will appreciate this little detail, wears a black leather jacket and has a saxophone in a hard case strapped to his back, presumably so people will know he is an arty-farty jazz-head-type asshole), who comes up to me at the end of class and says “I tried to see you in your office hour.” Oooh! Outrageous lie! Can I resist calling him on it? You know I cannot.
“Well, I know you turned up at my office at a random time and were rude to my office mate,” I say. He is startled by this, like, it had not occurred to him that professors might communicate with one another. “Well, anyway,” he carries on, after his momentary pause, and then wants to talk to me about what he needs to do to pass the class, because, he says, he has worked out that it is “statistically possible”. What he doesn’t say is “even though I have only been to 3 classes all term”. So I helpfully point this out, and then he wants to throw down over whether it has been 3 classes or 4.
Really? That’s the hill you want to die on? I say, with my eyebrows, while with my mouth I say things about how it’s oral presentations, and he needed to pick a topic 10 days ago. “…but, since you don’t think my rules apply to you, I am sure you are going to suggest you can give me a topic at this point.” Gentle readers, I know you saw what I did there, all sarcasmic and everything, but does Sax guy? You know he does not. “I will have it to you by the end of the day.” This, in leather-jacketed jazz-sax-land means midnight, of course, at which time he picks a sonnet by Shakespeare that some other student, one who attends class and does actual work already has dibs on. By this point, I am severely irritated, plus I am conflicted at letting this asshole participate in peer-marking situations, especially when he hasn’t been in class all semester. So I say “give me your essay, but I am not going to let you present.”
The essay (dreadfully written pile of unsourced nonsense that it is) eventually turns up, but the student does not. Want to make a bet on whether he shows up for the final?
Oh, and narcolepsy update: I made her sit in the back during oral presentations, which apparently finally clued her in to the fact that the nodding off thing was annoying everyone, and not just me, and since then she has been making noteworthy efforts to actually stay awake.
03.10.09
Newsflash – I am boring.
In fact, I am so boring that students fall asleep by the handful in my 8am class, including one in the front row who fell asleep in a really flamboyant, head-thrashy way that had everybody mesmerized. Here are all the things I was tempted to do, but did not:
- throw my textbook at her
- throw any other one of several assorted objects, including my bottle of water
- turn the contextual music on again, really loudly
- complain that if I am that boring, maybe I should just give up
- give a pop quiz (quietly, though)
- motion the rest of the class to leave, leaving her there
- kick her desk and/or chair
- shake her and say, loudly “OMG are you okay? You totally passed out!”
- laugh like a drain.
Instead, I tried incredibly hard to ignore it, and just let the rest of the students P&L.
02.25.09
Bossy and I throw down.
So, you know how it was, like, reading break last week? And there were no classes? And a bunch of my students missed class on the Thursday before, including Bossy, because it was like the last class before a week off? Well, I kindly sent them a reminder email late last week, since I had been getting emails that indicated confusion about a) when their essays were due, and b) which day we were having our library research session, and c) what the difference between their asses and their elbows might be.
Yesterday morning, it was snowing like fuck, and yes traffic was a little bad, and yes my class was at sparrowfart. When I got to class, there were 4 students there, and I wondered out loud, and rhetorically, where they might be, knowing the answer was, “in that bus that we can see out the window – the one that appears to be stuck in the driveway outside the building.” One student said, “yeah, the traffic is really bad,” and I was about to say something about giving them 5 minutes before we started when Bossy initiated the following conversation:
Bossy [with, like, totally a tone]: Maybe they went to the library.
Me: Why would they do that?
Bossy: Because of the email, which I only got at 7am this morning [sic].
Me: The email I sent 5 days ago? That says the library class is on Thursday, so don’t go to the library today?
Bossy: Yeah. Well, I don’t know when you sent it.
Me: I sent it 5 days ago.
Bossy: Well, I don’t have email at home. You shouldn’t be trying to contact me via email.
Me [applying the stink eye, which effectively communicates "how, then shall, I contact you, given that you missed the last class?]: [silence].
Bossy: Look. I am not trying to attack you.
Me: Thank you for clearing that up, because from where I am sitting, it certainly sounded like you were.
At this point, the bus finally makes it up the hill, and another half a dozen snow-covered students stagger in.
UPDATE: She was 15 minutes late to class today because she went to the wrong room. After making a fuss about how she got the email. Saying which room the class was in. I KNOW!
02.23.09
Death by a Thousand (Paper) Cuts
Today was a day of small annoyances. I must confess, I kind of let them get to me, which I blame on a) not feeling well and b) just having had a week off making me ungrateful. Let me lay some instances on you.
Augh. Now, I have one more, which is that my craptacular internets combined with WordPress to eat half this post as I was trying to publish it.
You all know by now my feelings about the stapler. Students who don’t have staplers wanting me to produce one out of my ass, students who staple dead ducks to their essays, students who take my stapler without asking: sometimes teaching is just one giant carousel of stapler madness. This being week, I dunno, 6 or something, of semester, you would think my students who have lab classes once a week, would, after 6 of them, during which they write assignments on computers, and then print out 2-3 pages, which extrude from an ordinary printer, and not some kind of magical machine which puts their pages in the correct order and staples them… Hem. As I was saying, you you would think that these students might also be getting the hang of the stapler thing. But no. Every time they come up to hand in their papers, it’s a string of “do you have a stapler”s. “No,” I say. Every time. You would think after, like, 4 times, they would get the message that I am not going to produce a damn stapler. Dude, if you care that much, bring your own.
Today was no different. I had a string of stapling requests, which were fraying my already headachy nerves. I think I might have started to look a little bit tetchy, because the next student who came up tried a variation on the theme. “It’s okay if we don’t have a stapler, right?” she asked. At this point, I kind of lost it. “Look,” I said “we go over this every week. We are in a lab; you are printing out papers; there is no stapler in the lab because every time we put one in here, some bastard steals it. So yes, it is okay if you don’t have a stapler. What is not okay is this constant harping on about your stapling desires. I have had enough. The next person who says the word ’stapler’ will lose a whole letter grade off his or her mark for the assignment.” I know: crazy and harsh, and possibly also crazy harsh. But the thing is – it worked. Not one further peep did I hear about staplage.
My next annoyance came in the form of a rather grubby student, hereinafter referred to as the Unwashed. It’s not so much her person that is revolting, though it is, it’s that her work is constantly grimed over with a slightly sticky film of dubious origin. (I could speculate, but some depths are better left unplumbed.)
Today’s offering was partially typed, although single spaced (a paragraph formatting choice guaranteed to raise professorial ire, saying, as it does – “your comments, I have no need of them”) slightly crooked on the page, and after the first two paragraphs, suddenly transitioned into an off-kilter, handwritten scrawl. The paper was also crumpled and slightly grubby, as if the Unwashed had been holding it in her sweaty paws, or possibly had shoved it into her pocket, along with unpleasant substances of a dusty nature.
Previous work from this student have included an assignment which was typed but had had the citation scrawled on in crayon, and a handwritten assignment on what appeared to be slightly greyish, lined toilet paper. This latter, mind you, consisted of questions and answers painfully transcribed because they had all been initially provided in electronic format. “Wouldn’t it have been easier just to copy and paste?” I had asked, incredulously.
So you see, today’s effort was not without history, and I had commented on the importance of the impression given to the instructor by work that looked like the student gave a shit (this comes under the “dead duck” rules, really). It was 10 minutes in to a lab class, and I suggested that the Unwashed might like to use some assigned class time to have a stab at cleaning this mess up. “Oh, no. I have to be somewhere at 1,” was her reply. Class was scheduled to run until 1:50, but because WTF guy has so schooled me on the unreasonablness of expecting students to spend all 110 minutes of class time actually in the classroom, I let this one go by with scarcely a raised eyebrow. I was, however, goaded into being petty. “Well, since this is not the first time I have mentioned the importance of presentation, it will affect your mark.” Her only response was a glance of withering scorn and a “Whatever” thrown over her begrimed shoulder as she left the room.
In other news, not all my students are this rude. Hulking Ethnic Guy #1 raised his hand in class to ask a question. “Excuse me, Miss,” he said. “What did you say?” I asked. “Miss. I wanted to ask a question,” he replied. “I know you wanted to ask a question, but dude, did you seriously just call me ‘Miss’?” To me, “Miss” conjures images of 19th century urchins in charity schools; well, either that or the opening of Monty Python’s Dead Parrot Sketch. “What do you mean, Miss?” “I am sorry, I have a cold.”
HEG#1 (as I will refer to him, rather than giving you a clue to his ethnicity by giving him a name like Hakeem, or Dimitri) went on to explain that he was trying to be polite. Much as I appreciated the impulse, I suggested that there were perhaps better ways to express it. I turned to the room for support. “Room,” said I, “how might you address me if you were trying to be polite?” Thinking, as I did so that it seemed rather a gratuitous conversation to be having.
The complete and utter silence with which my question was greeted suggest that in fact it was a conversation that we needed to be having, much to my chagrin. I have heard several of my colleagues going on about how they have to give lectures on classroom etiquette and manners, and I have tended to dismiss them as partronising and fuddy-duddy-ish. Although, given recent events, it may be that I have just had my head in the sand. In any event, the discussion eventually came around to the conclusion that since I had said they could call me by my first name that it was actually okay (even polite) to do so, and that they could, for special occasions, bust out a “Professor Whatladder.”
A few moments later, Hulking Ethnic Guy #2 entered the room. “Sorry I am late, Miss,” he said.
02.20.09
I think I might be a remote Hebredean Island.
Wait, what? I was reading this article What if the feminist blogosphere is a form of digital colonialism which SJ linked me to this morning. Apparently it is causing a little bit of kerfluffle amongst those in the feminist blogosphere who are, as the article kind of predicts, taking it a bit like a personal kick in the teeth.
I think the article poses some interesting questions, but I have to ask whether the issues they point out about the dynamics of colonization are really particular to feminist online communities. Actually, I don’t have to ask, because I know: they aren’t. So what really is the issue, here? That somehow, we want things that call themselves “feminist” to operate differently? To be speshul?
Let me take a moment here to navel-gaze, and to take this post personally. Am I colonial power? Is this even a feminist blog?
Well, hmmm. Let’s see. I think I am a feminist, although I have at times been told that I can’t possibly be one because I am in a heterosexual relationship with a man (the person who said this had been in a heterosexual relationship with the same man, but had, after a subsequent heterosexual relationship, decided she was gay and moved into a lesbian household and perhaps at the time, this was more about her than me, but I digress…), but I am a professional person, and I try to see myself as an independent woman and a feminist. Ergo, this is a blog written by a feminist. Sometimes it is about feminist stuff, like reading Emily Martin’s essay with my class, pondering the issues of body image and my daughter or dealing with Sexual Harrassment Colleague. Sometimes, I dare say, it is about stuff that would horrify some feminists, like my previous post where I gave an annoying female student a rather rude nickname. To be fair, I do this to the male students, too. Equal opportunity sarcasm.
Is it a feminist blog? I guess maybe, although I have only had hatemail from one male reader, so maybe I am not trying hard enough. Let’s put a small checkmark in the feminist column, anyway.
So what about the other stuff? The potential colonialism? Full disclosure: I am white and currently live in what might technically be called a British colonial outpost. I used to live in a different British colonial outpost, so not now, nor ever have been exactly USAsian, which I think means I am not quite in the right group. I am not a visible minority, and I have checkmarks in the “educated” column although I am not wealthy, dammit. So do I fall into that mainstream being defined here: “Larger feminist blogs are often run by a centralized group of like-minded, economically privileged, white, heterosexual, American women who follow a third wave feminist ideology”? Outside observers might say “yes”. I am not sure. Sometimes these feel like they might be my people, sometimes they are light years away from how I think about things.
The other issue is the one about the purpose of the blog. “Let’s be honest: blogs are businesses. They sell a product (writing) to their customers (readers) in exchange for revenue (via donation buttons, advertising dollars, referral programs, speaker’s fees, and book deal).”
Full disclosure: this blog costs me $20 a year. No, that’s not some kind of preamble to a donation drive. No ads, and I am not looking for ad revenue. I am not doing this for the cash directly. If someone offered me a book deal, would I take it? Hells yes. Am I in it for the popularity? I guess, but my desires are pretty modest. I look at my blog stats, now and again, and the fact that I have 100 or so hits a day makes me happy. I go, “cool”. But I did that when I had 30, too. I guess what I am saying is that I am happy with my population, and not really looking to expand my territory, to use the “colonial power” metaphor. I’m an outpost. A minor outpost, off the beaten track, with crap weather. If I get a little surge of tourist traffic now and again, well and good, but otherwise, as long as we have internet access and the local store sells coffee and booze, we are content.
If you want to thrash this out a bit more, there’s a discussion thread on Uppity Women.
02.15.09
Introducing Bossy the Cow.
Actually, I mentioned her earlier when she favoured me with her delightful email of helpfulness about how I seemed to have overlooked opening up Blackboard for the class she is in.
Bossy is constantly adding her less than helpful comments in class (when she shows up, that is) which often include providing us with slightly incorrect information on topics we discussed last class (when she was absent). She always has an answer for any question I have in class, and naturally it is never an answer of any use whatsoever.
Bossy has also taken a class with Professor Algernon, who makes up the rules of MLA to suit himself. This is starting to really piss me off, as Bossy is the 4th student of his I have had who tells me about how if “you are writing on, like, only one story, you don’t need citation.” Yes, you fucking well do. If for no other reason than you SUCK at MLA and need the practice.
She pretty much pushed me over the edge the other day when I was ranting about how my Chair, in his infinite wisdom, has decided to save wear-and-tear on the departmental secretaries by no longer allowing them to take in assignments from students. Now, it is all very well acting in the interests of getting them to do other work, which I am sure is Very Important (TM), but what am I to do about the liars, asstards and wankers? You know they will be spinning me a line about how they emailed their paper last week.
My solution is to tell students that until they have confirmation that their papers are in my hand (via, and I shudder as I say this, the digital dropbox on Blackboard, if they fail to come to class), they have to regard the paper issue as their problem. I refuse to take responsibility for vapour papers.
I explain this sternly, so as to make it clear I mean it. Bossy pipes up with “Well, you know, other profs have a policy where they let you email the paper to show it was done by the date and then you hand in the hard copy later.” I know they do, and it seems to me to be the worst of both worlds, and so I say “Yeah, no.” Which, apparently is not the way to talk to Bossy because she then pipes up with “Did you just mean to say ‘no’ to me?” The only response to this is a glare, which I give. No doubt I will get a note on my facial expressions next class.
02.14.09
My report card.
So, evaluations from last semester surfaced earlier this week. As I have said before, evaluations are an opportunity for students to take a pot-shot, and if not for the fact that they actually carry weight in the hiring process, I wouldn’t even bother worrying about them. Because basically, evaluations tell you how good you are at massaging the egos of a bunch of speshul snowflakes.
I must confess that I stooped to a bit of evaluation-pandering last semester, schedualling the evaluation for the class following a class I knew would go well, and during which I shamelessly gave out chocolate. As a result, my numbers were quite respectable (and don’t get me started on the statistical nonsense being perpetrated in our institution, which calls 4.0 out of 5 the acceptable average; grade inflation, anyone?). Do I feel dirty? Not to any extent that can’t be cured by a nice bath bomb.
Last semester’s students were embarrassingly reluctant to give additional comments, given that it was a writing class – oops! Perhaps because they were reasonably harmonious, and didn’t have any major complaints about things that are not in my control anyway – like the schedualling of the class, or the imposed common curriculum, the temperature of the room, or the odour of that one guy.
Written additional comments do tend to be educational; I think I learnt the most important thing about North American Snowflake culture from the student who commented that “when students give a wrong answer, she doesn’t even say ‘thank you for trying’”. Before that, I had no idea that my snowflakes were expecting to be thanked for their dumbassed utterances. Not that this comment caused me to change my behaviour, but it was an insight into just how incredibly narcissistic these products of self of steam edumacation really are.
This most recent evaluation had a little bit more WTF-ery with regard to student laziness. Of the few comments I received, most were positive, but there were two that had similar comments, clearly intended to be criticism. Are you ready? Apparently, I have a quite utterly unreasonable expectation that my students will pay attention and retain information. In other words, “she won’t repeat things if she thinks she has said them enough times for us to remember them, like more than 2 or 3 times.” Specifically, I am charged with only giving the instructions for the exam (which consisted of: “you will be writing 2 essays, one on a reading I will give you in advance, one on a ’surprise’ topic based on class discussion”, so hardly rocket science) only 3 times in the hearing of one student, who thus, it is charged, “is not 100% confident I know what is required”.
Got all that? Because I am not going to repeat myself.
