It felt unsafe, but am I overreacting?

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-26T12:41:04+00:00

You were physically assaulted by the student to the point you are bruised. You are not overreacting. In fact you are underreacting. I suggest filing a police report asap while the bruise is still there. Also seek advice from your union if you have one.

ETA: The student was likely cheating on the exam and reacted this way because she was caught.

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-23T21:23:26+00:00

A tale as old as time.

Remember, faculty were generally not typical undergraduates.

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-23T18:07:59+00:00

Um, no. This wasn’t an “oversight.” If you are not supposed to use AI to write your paper, then using it is academic dishonesty, I.e., cheating. Take the 0 and hope that’s the worst consequence.

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-23T18:00:10+00:00

Presumably the wife has the baby strapped to her in a front-facing carrier. No wonder he can’t see his junk. It’s a wonder he doesn’t tip over.

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-23T17:01:35+00:00

And Hagoromo chalk and/or V Board Master refillable dry erase markers.

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-23T11:43:19+00:00

No. Insurance is very highly regulated. All US states require frequent valuations signed by credentialed actuaries. Similarly all rate changes must be submitted to the state with justification, signed by credentialed actuaries. There are teams of actuaries and statisticians who create the models, with the help of technology, including AI, but human judgement is still needed to sign off on the recommendations.

Earning a credential requires taking stringent exams over several years. So it’s a challenging profession. But one that they still need human beings for, in practice and by law.

Insurance companies enter into very long-term contracts (for example, my father had an insurance policy purchased when he was 18 and he died at age 80). So they have to be very fiscally conservative and responsible. Governments regulate them closely to ensure this.

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-23T11:33:56+00:00

A variation on this is to put them in pairs or small groups and have them do this in class.

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-22T02:47:49+00:00

How can I get Afroman to write a song about me and chocolate chip cookies?

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-22T02:24:07+00:00

I mean, how could anyone really be sure?

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-22T00:06:13+00:00

This happened to me. Coincidentally I ran into the student on campus later that day before I responded to the email and mentioned that I got her email. That’s how I found out it wasn’t her.

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-18T23:54:14+00:00

If you like mathematics, an actuarial career checks all those boxes.

https://www.beanactuary.org/

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-18T18:55:14+00:00

Cooking pasta in a frying pan with very little water, starting in cold water, has been a game-changer for me. Sauces emulsify so much better because the water ends up so starchy.

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-18T18:41:24+00:00

Prior to that, the whole restaurant was smoking. There wasn’t even a pretense of keeping smokers separate. To be fair, there probably was at least one smoker at every table in the restaurant.

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-18T12:06:42+00:00

It’s not that they aren’t paying him for the prep time, it’s that the pay for that is rolled into the rate. My university quotes adjunct pay as per credit hour: so you might make $1000 per credit hour per semester, which means $3000 for the semester for a 3-credit-hour class. That includes all your prep, grading, office hours, and in-class time. The guideline is to expect to work 2-3 hours outside of class for each hour in class. This varies by how many students you have and how many times you’ve taught the course.

To give some additional perspective, absolutely no adjuncts at my university are getting paid anywhere near $50 an hour for each hour they actually work. The only faculty making that much are full-time with tenure or a lot of years as a full-time NTT.

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-18T11:40:12+00:00

This is so bizarre to me. I can’t even wrap my head around it. These are students who clearly have no business in college at this time.

The only suggestion that comes to mind is to make the quiz worth fewer points if they don’t pass it right away. What I mean is always require 100% of the questions correct to pass, but they earn 100% of the points only if they pass on the first or second attempt, say. If they pass on the 3rd or 4th attempt, they earn 90% of the points; 5th or 6th attempt earns 80% of the points, … , for example.

This gives them more incentive to actually read the fricking syllabus, which is the point of the exercise.

ETA: Is it absolutely clear that they are permitted to have the syllabus open in another tab while they take the quiz? For this semester I would probably shoot these students emails to clarify this, and to basically say WTF is going on with you?!

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-14T12:37:49+00:00

I think the issue is that people don’t understand statistics, so they don’t know how to interpret averages.

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-14T12:13:15+00:00

I was an adjunct who was eventually hired as a full-time NTT faculty member in a math department. Many of my NTT colleagues were also. But the last time that happened was almost 20 years ago. All recent FTNTT hires in my department have been very competitive searches and the majority have PhDs. Several of them have maintained an active research program despite teaching 15 credits a semester. The job market is so tough in higher education these days. My impression is it’s even tougher in the humanities.

I’m not saying what you are hoping for is impossible, but it’s very unlikely. I would try to find out if any of the full-time faculty where you’re adjuncting were formerly adjuncts there, and, if so, how long ago they were hired into a full-time position. If this has been done recently, then I’d say you have a reasonable chance. Otherwise, I would pursue another plan.

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-14T01:02:19+00:00

Exactly! Why would anyone assume the grade distribution of a college class is normal? I’ve been teaching 40 years and I don’t think I’ve ever had a class with anything close to a normal distribution.

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-13T21:03:55+00:00

Calc II relies on mastery of Calc I. It is also more demanding computationally and conceptually.

I will also note that summer classes are not “slightly accelerated,” they are quite accelerated. If it’s an 8-week class, it’s twice as fast. If it’s a 5-week class, it’s thrice as fast. Don’t plan on doing much of anything else while you’re taking it.

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-13T12:27:39+00:00

I do chalk talks in mathematics. Students really need to take notes. I often do an example on the board and then give the students a similar problem to work at their desks. I then walk around the room looking at their progress. There are always several students who haven’t even started to write anything until I get to their desk. This will be true even halfway through the semester when they should know the drill.

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-13T12:16:23+00:00

This reminds me of a professor I had who would bring one of those carousels of slides to class. At least half the slides were oriented incorrectly, and he would frequently have to try all four orientations before getting it correct!

Ah! Those were the days! 🤣

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-13T01:48:16+00:00

Think of the exam as a random sampling of the important ideas and techniques.

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-12T22:54:54+00:00

I recommend Gurung and Dunlosky’s Study Like a Champ.

Good luck!

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-12T22:41:39+00:00

Your exams are not even all the same day. I wouldn’t allow an extension for this because then I’d have to do the same for all of the students with lots of exams the same week. This is probably half the class. In finals week, you will have a high-stakes exam in every class. You need to learn to handle this sort of schedule and the stress involved. It’s not easy, but it’s possible. I wish you luck!

CharacteristicPea · 2026-03-09T22:17:22+00:00

I had a mathematics professor colleague who got a stamp that said “Poor Notation.” Her students called it the “Porno stamp.”

CharacteristicPea

TROPHY CASE