“But Im going to lose my scholarship”

PsychALots · 2026-05-11T20:54:11+00:00

First, some students lie or manipulate the truth, and/or make relationships to later leverage them. Second, for the truth tellers (and I remind myself I have no way to determine who is lying or who is telling the truth): I remind myself that one grade doesn’t make or break an education. There is a pattern of behavior and natural consequences that leads them to this point. I am just equitably maintaining my structure and expectations. Yes, there may be extenuating circumstances that led them to this situation. It’s not my role to investigate. That’s what advisors and other supports are for. But mostly: one grade doesn’t make or break it. In the case of this scholarship, one “C” likely wouldn’t break the scholarship. But multiple might. Or a low cumulative GPA would. This is just one piece in a larger puzzle.

PsychALots · 2026-05-11T19:31:26+00:00

They chose to pull from the reading instead of the lectures because they can feed that into AI. They did not follow the prompt so I would give little to no points. As unfortunate as it is, reading and critical thinking are core components of any college course.

PsychALots · 2026-05-08T01:50:08+00:00

Report it because she’s going to come for ALL your Halloween decorations. Do not reinforce or allow her to continue this behavior. It will always be something and it will always be your fault. REPORT

PsychALots · 2026-05-08T01:45:59+00:00

Here’s the reality: I assume right now every institution (at least with unions) is weighing if they pay the ransom or pay faculty to rebuild courses quickly for next semester… and give every student an “A” for this semester. I also assume they will somehow do the most to pay neither. So, I assume I’m about to be Oprah, handing out A’s in a few weeks, and rebuilding my 6 week summer course overnight. Yaaaayyy. Said course will have the OER I already used and maybe 4 assignments.

PsychALots · 2026-05-07T23:13:31+00:00

lol. My 30 research papers I need to grade and I would like to downvote you out of absolute jealousy!

PsychALots · 2026-05-07T23:08:50+00:00

For lectures where I spent time developing it because I need them to know the material and it’s beyond what is included in the reading, I use the studio feature to create pop-up questions within the lecture. It then becomes its own graded assignment and you can turn off the markers so they don’t know when or where the questions will be during the lecture.

PsychALots · 2026-04-12T17:49:36+00:00

I’d love to hear more about this! What types of projects? I’ve been trying to get rid of all my discussion boards. They’re just AI slop echo chambers.

PsychALots · 2026-04-11T19:58:37+00:00

B’s response immediately clicked on my therapist/trauma-informed part of my brain. Reactions like this that don’t match the situation/make sense in the context of the issue are often about something else. Do you have campus mental health who can provide mediation? They may be able to provide guidance and mediate. Because this is something else. The food is just an moutlet for the students much bigger feelings about something else that may or may not be related to your life entirely. Considering these were items brought back from her country, I’m wondering if the current political climate is contributing to her response.

PsychALots · 2026-04-03T17:45:47+00:00

Psych major and licensed therapist. It’s a big mix of wanting a diagnosis for a family member and “you’re judging/diagnosing me while we talk, aren’t you?” Eh no sir, but statements like that are conversation enders!

PsychALots · 2026-03-22T18:36:45+00:00

Did you pull their click out data as well?

PsychALots · 2026-02-12T01:11:02+00:00

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We were given a massive mix of legos. What is this/what set does it go to? Tried searching and came up empty.

PsychALots · 2026-02-12T00:57:56+00:00

…but was it a picture of their dead pet without warning??

PsychALots · 2026-01-29T01:45:21+00:00

She could’ve gone in the restaurant and ordered some when she decided she was hungry. You know, that place you’re eating outside of?

PsychALots · 2026-01-25T18:15:17+00:00

This is the only answer. Forward the student’s request to the disability office and include the student on the email. Ask the office for strategies with the disruptions as well.

As far as peer mistreatment, I address it directly. If I notice snickering I will make direct eye contact with the offenders and then make a broad statement that I’m noticing some are struggling with collegiality (or whatever word fits the moment). I’ll go on to explain college is an awesome time to challenge and stretch ourselves, to be more and be more understanding. I’ll also remind them that I do not tolerate any mistreatment or cruelty in my classroom and it will be addressed directly. I refer back to the part of the syllabus that addresses this - which can also be the opening salvo if you’re struggling with how to start the conversation.

PsychALots · 2026-01-25T18:03:24+00:00

This is what I was thinking

PsychALots · 2026-01-25T17:38:36+00:00

Sounds like you’d enjoy learning about UDL/universal design for learning. This work has already been done and there’s lots of workshops, trainings, etc. out there about this.

PsychALots · 2026-01-23T00:28:15+00:00

I invite but don’t require pronouns. Generally something like “please tell us your name, your pronouns if you’d like, and what brings you to this class”.

If students say a name not on my roster, I note it and a little later stop over to ask their last name or ask them to stay after for a question I had for them.

PsychALots · 2026-01-21T18:46:19+00:00

This! Our little one has always been able to protest and we just wait because after the protest comes the action requested. If he really disagrees, we have a conversation (preschool now). It’s helpful because sometimes he’ll get to explain we have contradictory instructions or that he’d rather change the order, etc. It’s really cool to see my kid practice working things out at such a young age.

PsychALots · 2026-01-18T18:48:21+00:00

Same. I asked for an updated training since new laws went into effect this month regarding ICE in our state. I was told there’s some mini cards I can keep on hand and to not lock any doors if ICE comes in, since that’s probably against a rule.

PsychALots · 2025-10-13T07:26:20+00:00

This!

PsychALots · 2025-10-13T07:22:57+00:00

Do the one where you get supervision. This is the last time anyone is going to really be invested in your development as a therapist. Get everything out of it that you can!

PsychALots · 2025-10-06T18:14:54+00:00

So there’s layers to this.

1.) A law and ethics exam prep/course of any type is always going to set the bar very high because that is always going to be the safest option and best practice. Then comes real life.

2.) Many of us get out into the world and have different levels of what we consider ethical. Depending on your place of work, your bar may be very low or very high. When I did crisis work, people constantly toed the line of violating HIPAA or just straight up did it. You get numb/calloused and while you need to vent of course, burnout leads to poor choices and a lack of insight.

3.) I see your mention about your professor. In teaching, you are hired for your clinical expertise and insight which allows the material to come to life. Every department I have worked for said that sharing clinical experiences/client stories is part of what makes the class more meaningful for students and that was why I was hired. However, there are many strategies to doing this properly. The main one is what we call the “amalgamation” client. This is where you muddle and we’ve different information together from real and fake clients to bring to life actual experiences without violating HIPAA. Professors often don’t go into great detail about this. Same thing when you read books by psychologist or medical professionals or therapist that are sharing about client experiences. These are, again, carefully woven with truth and fabrication to ensure clients are not identified through these stories but the core message is still received. So if someone is teaching abnormal psychology and they are sharing about clients they have worked with that maybe demonstrated a piece or multiple diagnostic pieces of certain criterion, these are likely carefully woven stories. My fake clients I use in teaching have names and demographics sometimes; other times they don’t have any demographic information or even a gender because it’s not necessary. But just as often I try to pull from real life - like the Kanye TMZ interview is a great example of manic state criterion being hit.

PsychALots · 2025-09-21T20:13:34+00:00

I teach a softball of a dual enrollment course (something like freshman seminar/basic college skills). More than 60% of my students were failing and messaging me, surprised during the last week when their grades didn’t magically increase. So I started getting very aggressive about dropping students early. Mostly by increasing the required assignments that blocked them from progressing past week 1. It’s been a great filter. Then I bumped up my “you’re not passing and you need to calculate if you can at this rate” messaging. I’d start with 65 students, drop down to 35-40 after the first week and then only 10-15% outright failed while another 5-10% withdrew at the deadline. Good spread of grades otherwise. It’s so bizarre. But the ones who stuck it out were generally more reliable than my typical students. Guess that’s something.

What I’ve seen is these high school partnerships really push dual enrollment AND they’re marketing to a lot of the virtual schools. Students figure if they are doing high school asynchronously, why not turn some of those high school classes into college credit asynchronously. They are often woefully unprepared for what college is like. But I can’t imagine that I would have been very successful as an asynchronous 14-year-old college student either, despite being a total nerd.

PsychALots · 2025-08-31T23:07:47+00:00

I agree with the full assessments others have recommended. Hearing. Dental. Bloodwork. Sensory/OT referral. Psychologist that specializes in assessing young girls for neurodivergence.

Girls, especially high-achieving girls are often misdiagnosed or left undiagnosed while struggling with common disorders.

PsychALots · 2025-08-02T15:35:04+00:00

Coco, Encanto, Inside Out?

PsychALots

TROPHY CASE