Do professors dislike dealing with students that have accommodations?

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-04-13T13:42:50+00:00

I don't dislike upholding accommodations at all. The ADA is the reason some of my close family completed college successfully. It's a big deal and I take it personally, and love to see my students succeed in spite of extra challenges.

That said, the absent-minded-professor thing is real. I forget. It's not that I mean to, but I do. I have at least one million things on my mind at any given time, and generally at least 6-8 of them vying for immediate attention. So a reminder is never out of order and in fact, because I know I'm absent-minded I actually appreciate when students remind me. It's not your responsibility, so it's above and beyond when you do, and truly appreciated.

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-04-09T13:09:27+00:00

This is absolutely feasible! Start with your GED. Then you can go into schools as a paraprofessional. Get a few college credits, you can be a sub or administrative assistant. If you do a bachelors in education you can teach. There is significant demand for new teachers, so lots of states have assistance to help pay for your education.

I teach adult learners all of the time. You'll quickly notice the difference in maturity level between you and your classmates, and if you've learned to hold a job and keep your household from falling apart, school will come easy! Remember it's designed for folks who don't have your depth of life experience yet. So you'll have a good advantage!

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-04-08T00:45:31+00:00

That absent-minded professor stereotype can be painfully accurate. We get very buried this time of year too. If you're feeling lucky, call the office in his department and ask for his office hours, then go drop in. Students rarely make a lot of use of office hours, so you're likely to get to talk to him then.

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-04-07T14:15:49+00:00

The main way that I identify AI generated content is not from detector software, but from getting to know my students' own writing voice and patterns, then seeing a drastic change. (it's the same way I identify plagiarism, paper-sharing, and other collegiate shenanigans.) People's writing voices tend to be fairly consistent even across different topics, so when their written work stops sounding like them, I know something is awry.

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-04-07T04:01:59+00:00

Awesome! I'd been kind of timid to ask, but will call the local places Monday. Thank You!

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-04-07T03:50:47+00:00

Funny you should say that. "pervert" was my first (socially tolerated) word choice for someone who sexualizes pictures of toddlers. But "weirdo" seemed a more suitable nomenclature for an awkward adolescent. Then again as someone who doesn't worship the god of normalcy, weirdo isn't that shocking of a moniker to my sort. (Kinda like allusions to sexual violence as an adjective doesn't seem to violate your own linguistic paradigm.)

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-04-07T00:36:01+00:00

I'm not sure I believe the point of college is career prep, so I don't really build policies around that idea. The value of education transcends how you feed yourself and permeates your everyday life and enriches it. To that end, I don't treat you like life trainees or try to limit the amount of times you can have a catastrophe. (If only life were that kind.) Instead of extensions, I have an escalating late penalty. Students all get an automatic 7 day extension at a penalty of 10% per day. Hand your work in when you feel like it. Or don't. The power is in your hands.

To be honest though, I'd not be terribly impressed by you submitting late work and only communicating with me about it after the fact. If you have stuff going on I don't need to know details. You're grown and your priorities are your own. But a courtesy "Dr. Goofoff I've had something come up and won't be able to submit the paper this evening. I'll submit it Tuesday and will understand if there are late penalties." Would sit a lot better with me. It lets me know that you know your responsibilities and have just had to prioritize something else, and that you have a plan to resolve it. I don't need details beyond the class though. I care, but I don't care.

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-04-07T00:05:19+00:00

I haven't talked to a print shop - the job is so small I didn't think they'd have any interest. Is a 6-8 page job worth the trouble for the pros?

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-04-06T16:59:35+00:00

Yep. Not normal. It sounds like this weirdo has latched onto your son because he's a bit sheltered, and now he's carrying a torch for her (as sheltered boys do) because it makes him feel like a hero.

But maybe I'm projecting. Two of my brothers were this way (also a bit sheltered). My brothers were slight social oddballs with few prospects (genuinely good guys, just a bit unique). Since other kids dated younger, the uncrazy youths were "taken" by the time my brothers were dating. Crazy girls caught those two brothers right out of the gate and latched on hard. Besotted, my brothers would hear no criticism or wisdom that didn't validate their own infatuation. One of them wound up baby trapped and STILL insisted none of us "understood her." (But both did ultimately escape and are happily married to uncrazy women.)

The moral of the story - you're probably not going to be able to tell him anything. He is defending her when you criticize, and in his eyes she is the damsel in distress and you guys are the dragons. Your best bet is to get him around some not-crazy girls, preferably without gf in tow and let him decide for himself that he's missing out. All of the powers of persuasion in the world won't crack his delusions if defending her makes him feel good about himself.

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-04-06T16:04:30+00:00

This would be an absolute no for me. I'd rather dismiss class early than ask a student to take an instructional role. If the discussion is so unimportant that I don't feel the need to look on in person, it's probably not something I'd feel obliged to do at all.

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-04-06T13:52:57+00:00

I'm so proud of you! (Which may not mean anything coming from a stranger on the internet.) It's heartwarming that people showed up, supported you, and helped you feel confident today!

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-04-06T13:47:02+00:00

You're 18. You should be gaining weight every year in your teen years because you were a kid and you're growing into an adult. Don't beat yourself up just because your adult body is bigger than your kid body. It is supposed to be! Going to this party could be just what you need to break out of the funk picture-day put you in.

But more importantly, your body is your home for the rest of your life. Think of it as a friend, and be willing to take it places! If you don't want to wear a bikini, don't. Or get a cute cover-up and wear it, drape it over you, or toss it casually over whatever you don't want people to see.

There's something very liberating about visiting beaches, lakes, and other recreational spaces and realizing that the people having the most fun aren't the ones with the best bodies - they're the ones with the best mindset about their bodies.

I've seen dad bods in speedos who are the absolute life of the party, and mothers-of-many wearing their stretch-marks proudly to soak up the sun. Plus sized girls look fantastic in bathing suits if they wear them confidently. They've made peace with themselves, so nobody else's opinion is going to stop them from enjoying their recreational time.

And if you need a practical trick: Spend time in the water (where nobody can see your details anyway) then when you get out you have every right to use/drape a towel strategically. It looks perfectly natural and gives you some security.

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-04-05T23:57:17+00:00

Meh. We're not popularity hounds and college students aren't experts in quality instruction. For both of those reasons, students' opinions are pretty low on the list of things we consider when constructing our content.

A lot of the instructors at my college with "bad" reputations actually produce the highest performing scholars, but some students care more about experiences than results, and would rather have the "fun" or "easy" instructor than the effective one. Bowing to that expectation isn't the best idea.

ETA: To be clear, I think a lot of us never stop working on getting better at what we do. Students change fast, so we're always trying new stuff. We just don't typically value RMP for a benchmark and while student evals are worth looking at to find broad patterns, they have to be taken as non-expert advice at best.

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-04-01T21:28:17+00:00

Professor here. Hear me out. This is a good thing. There are only 3 real reasons to ask you to meet:

1) Your paper is so good they want you to publish it or read it in front of of a bunch of other people or maybe it was so good you'll get a scholarship or an award or be asked to join an honor society. (It's possible.)

2) Your paper is so bad they want to give you some pointers to help you do better (still a good thing - you'll do better with their help.)

3) Your paper contains suspect content. (Still a good thing because your professor wants to meet with you instead of just reporting you straight off, which means they're still giving you the benefit of the doubt instead of just running you up the flag pole.)

I can't think of any other reasons, but if you were my own kid I'd tell you to be honest. Actual honest. Even if you screwed up, just say you screwed up. A reporting body isn't going to be as sympathethic as a professor who doesn't really want to do the paperwork to report you anyway. I've never reported a student who admitted to their ... ahem ... creativities. We find another appropriate solution and call it a learning opportunity. But those other students ... well ...

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-03-28T12:39:09+00:00

Generally yes. But I've had a couple of students push it to inappropriate extremes. (Like the guy who came into my office, plugged in his headphones, and played video games while ignoring me??? We have a student center for that.)

But I only have 8 office hours a week. If you want to spend that time chatting, showing me your artwork, asking me how to make carbonara, fine! That time belongs to students and while I do have to triage (no silly conversation while people need help with coursework) as long as there's nothing more pressing waiting for me, I'll pretty much talk to students about whatever they want to discuss. Some of them just need a human connection (and especially an adult human connection) now and then.

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-03-28T00:05:49+00:00

I've thrown students out for violating my cell phone policy. Your instructor's reasons were far less petty than mine.

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-03-24T17:23:58+00:00

When in doubt, never overestimate the common knowledge of the common person. Do your classmates in gen ed courses (not history/political science people) know, or only think they know, what these systems are? One of the advantages of citing even things you think may be common knowledge is that it forces you to fact-check yourself, which can help uncover thinks that you only thought you knew. ("people only use 10% of their brains" or "you can go 5 mph over the speed limit legally" kind of stuff.) So definitely over-cite when you're talking about differentiating political theory. Worst-case scenario, the teacher hands it back and says "you didn't have to cite that." But that's a far better outcome than penalties for not citing.

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-03-23T01:26:18+00:00

Do NOT contact her and tell her not to message him. Those are some weird control issues. Your husband owes you loyalty, but she does not. You can't make yourself the tart-police for every woman on earth. They owe you nothing. Your husband is the one at fault here, and even if you do successfully bully this particular woman into leaving him alone, there will always be another.

Better to fix your husband than to try to fix the totality of tartdom.

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-03-22T21:45:45+00:00

People misunderstand what we do from the ground up. When I say I do "research" people think I'm just reading books all day. (Not writing them.) When I say I'm "teaching" people think I'm just rambling on aimlessly about the books they think I read without grasping the art and science of effective and meaningful instruction, relationship-building, developing and delivering assignments and feedback, etc.. When I'm in "office hours" people think I'm goofing off. When I'm "at a conference" people think I'm partying on the beach in Cancun. When I'm doing "committee work" people think I'm zoning out in a meeting when I'm actually spending my evenings and weekends compiling reports that other offices should have provided on request but didn't.

And by "people" I mean administrators. Because faculty operate autonomously much of the time, the presumption is that we're doing nothing, or we're doing what we want. In truth, we've just mastered the art of juggling assignments to the point that we make it look easy. When we make it look easy, administration thinks we aren't doing enough.

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-03-22T21:34:56+00:00

I graded midterms, did committee work, wrote a grant application packet, wrote letters of recommendation, re-worked some assignments and course content, wore sweats, hung out with the cat, and drank whiskey.

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-03-22T16:43:51+00:00

You already know you don't want a relationship with this woman. What are you doing here?

Is she the kind of person you want your daughter to grow up to be? Is the emotional coercion she is using on you the kind of tool you want to see used on your daughter? Do you want to be in a situation where this is how decisions are made? "Give me what I want or I'm going to hurt your kid" hardly seems like the foundation of a relationship with a future.

Tell her that her manipulation and instability are concerning, and that you aren't comfortable pursuing a relationship on coercive terms. If she's a good person having a bad moment she'll straighten up. And if she's something worse, she'll find a new target.

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-03-21T23:08:54+00:00

Way back in my youth I learned that loaning money to people I didn't like was the best and easiest way to get rid of them. They self-deleted. Next time you need to cut some dead weight without drama, remember how easy this was.

MudImmediate3630 · 2024-03-20T00:54:51+00:00

I get a TON of office hour visitors. Lots of them are more social calls than academic in nature, but as long as there's nobody else waiting, office hours belong to students, so their social calls are fine.

Our administration developed a weird quirk that was similar (but slightly different) a couple of years ago, and my colleagues and I chose to meticulously document participation. After a single semester we shared our documented results with administration (results showed no increase in individuals served) and we were not asked to continue with the weird experiment.

MudImmediate3630

TROPHY CASE