The Waiting Room

This could take a while...

Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Double Trouble

Posted by Seeking Solace |

I am not talking about Steve Ray Vaughn's band.

These are the two students in my program who are also the "Mean Girls". They are taking my legal research and writing class this term. They have not taken a class with me before.

And they are going to learn that unlike some other instructors at my college. I will not put up with their crap.

For example, I gave the students an assignment in which they had to read a case and answer a series of questions. The questions are designed to help them recognize the different parts of a legal brief. My students are required to type their responses and submit their assignments electronically.

Double Trouble #1 typed her responses using one or two word answers. It was clear that she did this at the last minute. The responses are such that one would have to write anything from few sentences to a short paragraph. (Those of you who know how to write a legal brief, don't worry, I will be teaching them to shorten their responses).

That is not acceptable.

Double Trouble #2 scanned the paper with the questions and typed her responses on the assignment sheet. She did not make any distinction in font or type.

Really? Wouldn't it have been easier to just re-type the questions and then type the responses on a separate sheet of paper?

My first thought was "WTF, you can't be that lazy/stupid?" My second thought was"Do you really think I am going to accept this?" My third thought was "Crap, am I going to have to write on assignments that you must provide detailed answers and type your responses on a separate sheet of paper?

Is this what the world has come to?

Needless to say, Double Trouble will have to re-do the assignment. And they will only have 24 hours to do it.

Please don't tell me that maybe Double Trouble did not understand or that they are new to college. They are in their fourth term at College. They are bright. They are just trying to be slick. I've seen this before, but never this bad.

They just don't realize that I am about to take them to school.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

punks.

Rebecca said...

Okay, I'm probably missing something here, and I have to admit to a certain amount of laziness. I'm always looking for the easiest way to get something done...although I call it the most "effective" way of achieving a satisfactory result with the least amount of effort, working smarter instead of harder.

So. I would totally have scanned the questions and put my answers below them on the computer, lol. I don't get why typing them would be better, when it's more time and effort than scanning, and also more room for error.

Still, like I said, I could be missing something completely. As well as being a bit lazy, I also happen to often be quite oblivious.:)

In any case, best of luck with dealing with those two. I hope they don't cause you too much aggravation this term.

Anonymous said...

I'm confused too. If she can type on a scanned document, why can't you type on it to send back to her? If you can't for some reason, tell her to save in a file format that you can edit in order to provide feedback on her assignments. Or did I miss something too?

FYI I require all electronically submitted files to be in RTF format and will accept no other format (txt, docx, doc, wps, pdf, etc.).

Alice said...

Yes, don't let them slide by.

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