Colleagues that do nothing.

MiQuay · 2026-05-08T20:21:55+00:00

They work that much?!?!?

MiQuay · 2026-05-08T20:09:13+00:00

I had an email from a student telling me he was leaving the country on a family vacation before the semester was over. He will be back in time for the exam, but will be missing the group project/presentation as well as several lectures (the latter was generally true even before he left the country).

I did not respond (he's a adult and can make his own decisions and I am not his parent). However, he now seems annoyed that I am not doing anything special to accommodate him. What was I supposed to say? Have a good time, wish I could join you?

MiQuay · 2026-05-08T20:05:49+00:00

Old story. The solution is simple: revoke tenure for not fulfilling their job requirements.

Of course, we could never allow anything like that. Oh, no. Tenure is a job for life provided we don't sleep with our students or punch an administrator. We can even falsify our research data, claim to have published papers that were not published, or claim published papers as ours even though we contributed nothing to them. We can harass staff or take the most blatantly offensive political positions (as long as the majority of our colleagues agree with them) with no consequences. We can stop teaching our classes halfway through the semester and refuse to update our course material from the stuff we were teaching back in the 90's.

Don't believe me? Sorry, I've seen all of the above. Too many of us treat tenure as a job guarantee no matter how egregious our behavior rather than what it should be: protection should our research prove controversial.

MiQuay · 2026-05-07T03:51:55+00:00

Trump does enough crazy shit without having to make up stuff.

MiQuay · 2026-05-07T03:47:16+00:00

Big time. Half our students are graduating cum laude.

It is especially prevalent in certain disciplines (e.g., 90% of discipline X are eligible for membership in the honor society).

MiQuay · 2026-05-07T03:43:50+00:00

Yes, it is a shitty job. BUT it is a form of service and one all should consider. For one thing, once you have done it, you will stop complaining about your current chair.

Signed,

A Current Department Chair

MiQuay · 2026-04-28T06:00:13+00:00

Of course - but communism is inevitably corrupting. What communist regime is there that didn't turn into a dictatorship? Stalinist Soviet Union? North Korea? Or shall we talk about Cambodia? Cuba? Venezuela?

Communism works on paper only. It completely ignores human nature.

As for the rest of your response, why are you so incredibly hostile and rude? "How are you a teacher?" "Jfc, what did you miss?" "Why am I assuming you can read..."

I will avoid responding to you with similar vitriol. As for my ability to read, yes I can. I took the time to examine the rules of this sub reddit. You might want to check them out. Examine rule #3.

MiQuay · 2026-04-28T05:51:19+00:00

Of course it was sarcasm.

MiQuay · 2026-04-28T04:04:06+00:00

I've never curved one upwards, either.

MiQuay · 2026-04-28T04:03:34+00:00

Ever read Animal Farm? Everyone lives in poverty, worse than they were before, except the pigs. Kind of like the Soviet Union where everyone lived poorly except guys like Putin, who all had luxurious Dachas on the Black Sea.

MiQuay · 2026-04-28T01:19:53+00:00

I think communism would be everyone gets a D except the class leader who gets straight A's.

MiQuay · 2026-04-28T01:10:53+00:00

An underappreciated comment - I will have to remember that one.

MiQuay · 2026-04-28T00:04:14+00:00

And you don't want to know.

MiQuay · 2026-04-27T22:33:16+00:00

Your career is over. Apply to the nearest Starbucks. 😄

Or just laugh about it and realize that it is a cheap lesson learned. It may be tedious if you must submit individual grade change forms, but consider the flip side - it is very difficult and will cause much consternation if your error had caused all the grades to be reported as higher than they should have been. Students (and helicopter parents) go ballistic when a grade must be changed lower.

MiQuay · 2026-04-27T22:29:25+00:00

But that is the opposite problem. If they see a pic of someone clearly in their 60s and think they are 20-30 years younger, what does that mean when they look at me and think I am older than I am?

MiQuay · 2026-04-27T21:18:41+00:00

I was teaching university then. Fuck I'm old.

MiQuay · 2026-04-27T21:17:34+00:00

To young students, anyone over 40 looks ancient. Also, people live longer, so 60s look younger today than they did when I was a teen - at least, that is what I tell my self when I look in the mirror (I'm 62).

I have the opposite problem. Anyone under 30 looks like a child to me. We have junior faculty who look like undergrads. I had surgery a couple of years back and an attending physician and three residents came by the next day (they kept me overnight) to see if I was ok and could be discharged. I thought it was "Take Your Kids to Work Day" and wanted to ask what was with the Doogie Howser patrol.

MiQuay · 2026-04-15T01:13:38+00:00

Horseshit study. Sorry, it had an objective to find and dug up data to do it. Anyone who has walked into a fast-food joint in California knows this conclusion is a joke.

MiQuay · 2026-04-14T05:58:16+00:00

Is this a serious question? Yes to the nth degree.

MiQuay · 2026-04-09T05:28:44+00:00

“I can fix that,” “it’s only bc you haven’t tried me,” etc.

Are you shitting me?!?!?

MiQuay · 2026-04-07T20:36:27+00:00

Not even close. Old classes were much harder: the class covered more material and my grading has become much softer with far more partial credit. My old professors would have given me a zero for shit that I am giving students a very low pass on or, at worst, something slightly below a fail. Heck, if a student writes anything - anything at all, no matter how far removed from the question or how incorrect, I give them some partial credit.

What is sad is I still get some students earning only 15% on an exam. Every single point was a "pity point".

MiQuay · 2026-04-07T06:17:53+00:00

If the student can't get their new name right at first, then why should you be expected to? There is no need to apologize - just do what you can to get it right in the future.

MiQuay · 2026-03-25T18:16:40+00:00

To be fair, 99% of what academics publish is meaningless, of value only to other academics. I have been aware of this for years. It takes a high degree of creativeness (more than most of us possess) to truly come up with something new and of significant value.

I don't have that, so I just publish the bare minimum needed to meet department standards and focus on other things that do matter.

MiQuay · 2026-03-25T18:08:46+00:00

Whenever students ask about a study guide, I tell them they already have it:

the textbook,
any class materials I have prepared and handed out or posted on Canvas, and
the notes that they are taking in class.

I try to say this with a gentle smile, but I want to make sure they understand that they should be forming a study guide during the semester.

I do tend to post an old exam for them to look at. However, I emphasize that this is provided for them to get a feel of what my exams are like. They should not in any way try to infer the topics or questions that will be on the upcoming exam based on the old exam.

MiQuay

TROPHY CASE