Graduate Assistants

It's amazing to me how someone that I considered a close friend would stab me right in the back over an assistantship assignment. My friend, Andi, went behind my back to the department chair and attempted to get my summer TA assignment. Andi is not eligible for an assignment because she's only a masters student but was told that, if there were any available after all of the doctoral students accepted, she would be contacted. Apparently, when she didn't receive an assignment, she decided to...Read Full Story

This is an email I received from one of Whisper's students regarding her paper grade, which was a "D." Hers was one of the worst of the lot (they were all mostly pretty atrocious, but hers was particularly bad). Jericha: In reference to my paper grade, I went ahead and read all of your suggestions and I will definitely correct and modify so that my final paper is better. Although I understand your suggestions I don’t see how could my grade be a C average. I feel as if I did a lot of work and...Read Full Story

Nifty-summer-teaching-job has completed, at least for the time being, and the course evaluations are beginning to roll in again. Just like last time, most of them are really positive. However, there are a very few that really piss me off to my very core. One of the high school students (or possibly a parent) rated me as a "below average" teacher but failed to follow it up with a comment as to what, exactly, they felt was substandard. Not that a comment explaining their opinion would have made...Read Full Story

I met with a couple more of Whisper's students today. They both had fixed up their papers and I was so impressed with the effort they put in to elevating the quality of their work. On top of it they were both really appreciative of my willingness to meet with them. That made me feel so crappy. They were devastated by their horrible paper grades and, apparently never saw it coming. This seems to be the theme across the students. However, these two students were so nice about it. They seemed to...Read Full Story

I'm feeling a little less hateful towards Whisper today. However, I still despise the air he breathes and want desperately to be reassigned so that I no longer have to deal with his passive-aggressive bullshit. Honestly, it's more than I can take. There was an issue with plagiarism that I encountered while grading papers this past week. I gave each of the students a zero for the assignment and forwarded their papers to Whisper with the plagiarized passages highlighted. I also sent along the...Read Full Story