Under Electronic Siege

[chelseagirl]

Tonight, I submit final grades.

Tomorrow, I get emails from students who inform me I have ruined their lives by giving them a B. [Which they could have thought about before they failed to proofread the paper, ignored my comments, didn't make the Writing Center appointment I asked the class to make, or relied too much on one appointment to fix all their issues without taking responsibility for their own work. Bitter much? Me?]

Actually tomorrow I've got a long Amtrak ride and probably won't check work email because for heaven's sake, don't I ever get a break?

My Stalker just friend requested me on Facebook. I'm going to ignore it for a few days, and then email her (once I go back into my work account) and explain I don't accept friend requests on social media from current undergraduates, because it's important to have certain boundaries.

Comments

[corvidology]

Been there, experienced that and you have my complete sympathies.

I hope you have a nice break. ♥

[chelseagirl]

I finally logged on this morning and it wasn't too bad, but now they're still coming in. *sigh*

[lunabee34]

That is an imminently wise way to handle the situation.

[chelseagirl]

"But I worked so hard!"

And a B is a perfectly fine grade.

[lunabee34]

The ones with Bs are always the pissiest. It is known.

[ancarett]

Fly (or chug) away and do refuse Sunday emails from work. They're evil!

[chelseagirl]

There were only two complaints when I logged on this morning, and actually both of them I understood -- one is a clueless student who was gonna complain no matter what and the other is a good writer who screwed up. But now the "but I worked so haaaaard" ones are starting to trickle in.

[trepkos]

You are wise on both accounts.

[chelseagirl]

Sigh.

[havocthecat]

A B will ruin no one's fucking lives. Whatever.

[chelseagirl]

And yet I get these plaintive emails, swearing that they worked so haaaaard and I'm ruining their GPA. With a B.

[havocthecat]

It's the academic system. I mean, we're being pushed to push our kidlet harder in math - he's been a B/C student pretty consistently, despite being gifted, because he wants to go into engineering, and he's going to need to take a lot of math classes for that. But honest to fuck, we already push him hard enough! Just to do the work! And study! We finally reached the tipping point where he's doing it on his own and planning it on his own and that's everything I hoped for, and frankly, if he gets a fucking B or a C in a gifted math class, whatever! I'm happy! Instead of him being an A/B student or an A student and being burned out, I'd rather he be a B/C student and have coping mechanisms for stress and planning mechanisms for getting his work done and learning when he takes a test and doesn't do well on it.

(They allow retakes in his school district, which is really, really nice and means he's not totally fucked, because - well, in real life, you don't usually have a one and done, which is basically the school board's reasoning behind allowing retakes, though they're not endless, and there are pre-retake requirements. It's not a free-for-all.)

ANYWAY. Bs are not going to kill your career. But apparently a lot of people don't realize this, and while I adore Clueless as a film, no one is Cher and can negotiate their way to straight As because they're not a scripted movie character.

[evelyn_b]

Oh, teaching, how I don't miss you. As a lifelong B student, that intense fear of getting a B always blew my mind a little. I'd wonder if it was a generational thing, but I knew just as many people like that when I was in high school as I did later on, so it can't be entirely. Maybe it's upbringing? Misguided parents misguidedly insisting on straight As in everything? A B in undergrad means you did fine; it says so right on the grading rubric. *shakes head sadly*

I hope your stalker takes the hint and moves on. :( And I hope you take that Amtrak break and enjoy it.