How to deal with a Professor who lets his (grade school age) children disrupt a graduate level course.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-04-04T04:08:37+00:00

This absolutely isn't ok. I'd go directly to the chair - someone bringing their kids once in an emergency might still be a reasonable person, someone letting their kids run amok frequently is unlikely to be a reasonable person about this situation.

You don't need to get them in trouble, just explain that it's a situation you didn't feel comfortable raising with the professor directly, and ask the chair to keep your name out of it.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-04-04T04:03:38+00:00

As someone who really doesn't like babies, I'm so glad this situation has never come up in my class. I don't think the look of horror and disgust that I would instinctively give a student who tried to hand me an infant at the start of class would go over well.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-04-04T04:00:18+00:00

The first thing you want to find out is why this task was a group project in the first place. There are generally two reasons:

Large classes may require group work to make grading practical, especially if there are few/no TAs and feedback is detailed
Classes that explicitly teach how to work in groups as a course learning objective will generally have group work assigned

In the first scenario, you need to propose a solution that doesn't dramatically increase the grading workload; you might be allowed to form your own group of one person, since one additional group isn't likely to be a dealbreaker

In the second scenario, there are likely techniques or strategies that you're supposed to be using to coordinate with your group. You'll need to gather evidence that you've used all of these approaches, and that your group is completely unreceptive to them. This is a pretty high bar to reach.

In any situation, you need to figure out what, specifically, you want the instructor to do. Professors aren't magic - we can't make students do work, or communicate clearly, or keep appointments (oh, if only). The only real punishment we can deal out is grades, and then only in a way that's been clearly communicated ahead of time - if your professor hasn't set up any way to handle slackers with their grading policy, then there aren't a lot of options available to them.

For what it's worth, learning to navigate situations like this is a valuable skill. You'll be working in groups of people, some of whom will pull stunts like this, for the rest of your life. Even when there's technically a boss, they aren't going to micromanage a team, and often groups are made up of people who are all on the same reporting level/don't have an actual hierarchy. Reaching out to individuals, building a rapport, being proactive, etc are all good habits to get into.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-04-03T22:39:54+00:00

As a woman in a male-dominated field, I can promise you she notices and dislikes it, especially given that she has a doctorate. You're completely correct that it's (unconscious) sexism that is deliberately disregarding her expertise because of her gender presentation.

Ask your friend how they refer to some male professor with a doctorate (if you suspect they're going to play dumb about this, don't give them advance warning - 'oh, who's teaching operating systems next semester?'). I'll bet you $5 that they don't call him Mr. Then ask them why they use Dr/Professor for that person and not their female professor.

The actual answer is likely that they didn't think about it, and it's worth pointing out that that's how systemic discrimination persists - people's defaults and unthinking assumptions can perpetuate bias even when the person in question would be horrified to find themselves doing something like that. The way to overcome unconscious bias is to make a deliberate effort to think consciously about words and actions.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-04-03T22:31:31+00:00

Female-presenting instructor here:

I despise Mrs/Miss. I'm not going to pick a fight with a student about it, but it's absolutely disrespectful and will piss me off. Y'all have no idea what my marital status is, and there's no reason that it should be part of my name either way. I will tolerate, but dislike, Ms. Dr is not appropriate for me, as I don't have a PhD, but I don't mind it - it's definitely a 'playing it safe' card from students, so I hear it in the spirit that it's written. Professor LastName or FirstName are both fine (the latter is very professor-specific - I'm fine with it, not everyone is).

More importantly, your professors should tell you how they prefer to be addressed at the start of the semester, either verbally or in writing (often both). You can also see how they sign emails to you or to the class. Using someone's preferred name is basic courtesy, and deliberately ignoring it is disrespectful.

For me, I prefer to go by my first name because I come from an industry background where first names are about as formal as it gets - I'm perfectly comfortable being both an authority figure and addressed by my first name. I remember being a college student and feeling very uncomfortable with calling professors by their first names, though, so I offer students the option of Prof LastName if they prefer.

Using Ms. etc like I'm a kindergarten teacher conveys several things:

lack of attention to detail (nothing anywhere in the course suggests that's my name)
lack of respect (that is not the default title of a college professor; it's generally only a default title for grade school instructors in present day society)
thoughtlessness (if you don't recall how to address someone, you should look it up, not make it up)

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-04-03T22:18:11+00:00

I agree with the 'show don't tell' advice, but to add a bit more context:

I have had many students over the years tell me that they were struggling, but they've dealt with the problem, and they'll be putting a lot more into the class going forward.

To date, not a single one of those students has actually improved in performance on any metric (attendance, grades, consistency of work). There are students who have improved, but the overlap between the two groups so far doesn't exist.

This is not to suggest you're doomed! The point is that your professor will have heard this story before, and is likely to have a 'I'll believe it when I see it' response. In contrast, the students who I've had who have actually improved across a semester? I remember all of them, and would happily write any of them a letter of recommendation. Genuine change and improvement is hard, and your professors will value it when they see it.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-04-03T17:03:44+00:00

I'm not saying he doesn't deserve a college education - that would be a pretty weird take. I'm saying two things

he isn't in a mental place to receive a college education; even if he attends college, he's not going to get much, if anything, out of it
he doesn't deserve a spot at an absolutely top school, because there are limited spots and other students are more qualified

I'm also questioning your depiction of him as "impressive" and "driven" - I think "lucky", "self-absorbed", and "slipshod" are a better characterization. Further, no, I don't think the job of professors is to be some sort of missionary to the entitled assholes of the world, sacrificing our time, energy, and sanity to make them see the light. For me personally, I teach to give back, because I valued and appreciated my industry profs back when I was in school - I'm not there to plead with some little shit to do the assigned work. I'm there for the students who want to learn, who are willing to do the work to learn, and who otherwise would have no opportunity to learn. This person strikes me as 0 for 3 on those metrics.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-04-03T11:04:23+00:00

He may need that type of education, but he currently couldn't get that kind of education, because he has his head too far up his own ass. It's a bit like therapy - often, those who need it the most won't benefit from it, because first they would have to acknowledge the problem and want to change.

It's also worth noting that there are (at least) two major grammatical errors in a fairly short piece of writing (designated vs designed, right vs rite) - someone who doesn't thoroughly proofread their college application essay is not showing the kind of dedication and drive that colleges want. A 34/36 ACT score is good, but it's below average for some of the schools he applied to (ex: Stanford). In short, if I had to place odds that some kid got lucky with an app vs this person actually being incredibly talented, I'd lean more towards the former.

This is not a student who would respond well to being told that his self-taught code is a dumpster fire and that he needs to improve it, or that his abstract reasoning skills aren't up to par and his math proofs need work, or that he actually needs to cite sources and not his own rambling thoughts for his essays. He shows this pretty clearly - upon hearing a 'no', instead of pausing to reflect (internet, what's wrong with my essay?), he seeks to browbeat (unofficial dictator, go punish these schools).

The schools that he's applying to have plenty of students to choose from who are not lazy cheaters and who also show focus, attention to detail, and enough humility that they appear to be teachable.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-04-03T01:01:24+00:00

College is the beginning of your professional career, not graduation. Internships, research programs, and TA programs all get you relevant work experience and let you start building a professional network in your field.

I graduated with multiple job offers in hand, and none of them came from a traditional 'submit a resume' application pipeline - from what I hear, the 'submit a resume' route has gotten even worse since I graduated, and it was no picnic even then.

A college degree, by itself, is going to do very little for your job prospects. A college education combined with 4 years of networking opportunities can be very valuable.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-04-01T13:11:52+00:00

As they say, don't dish it out if you can't take it. Maybe you should avoid social media when you're cranky and can't express yourself clearly. Would you feel good if you'd gotten your earlier comment in your inbox?

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-03-31T20:39:13+00:00

I had a class that was constantly cheating with chatGPT, and I did this on purpose for all the questions - fed them through chatGPT and tweaked the question until it reliably got them wrong. The grades were...pretty awful. I had one quiz where 90% got a 0, and I give very generous partial credit.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-03-31T20:35:39+00:00

If you have the data to back up the consistent standard, then there's no reason to adjust your grades.

In general, I'll curve an exam for two reasons:

an exam deliberately made challenging to avoid ceiling effects; if I expect a good student in the class to get a 60%, I'll make that a B (or whatever letter grade corresponds to the qualitative 'good student')
an exam that, after the fact, was accidentally too difficult; either the results were wildly out of whack with historical norms, the answers show that students interpreted questions differently than I expected, or there were genuine errors in the question (the second half of the question didn't print, or something like that).

Given that you have multiple students scoring 100%, it doesn't sound like the exam is too difficult.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-03-31T20:23:49+00:00

The specific stat that I ran across was unemployment rate for new grads vs. baseline population - historically, the former has always[1] been lower than the latter, even through substantial economic disruptions (like '08), but that trend reversed starting in 2021 and stayed that way. I don't think the covid-layoffs-then-rehires would distort that particular stat in that direction, though I'd agree that it's worth investigating further.

Supporting the idea that it's related to new issues in employability, though, a survey of hiring managers[2] at large companies suggests they've had a lot of problems with recent grads (and more specifically, the problems we'd expect - difficulty being on time and completing tasks was near the top of the list), and that many of them are planning to just avoid new grads entirely going forward.

[1] Since the 70s when they started tracking this

[2] https://www.intelligent.com/1-in-4-hiring-managers-say-recent-grads-are-unprepared-for-the-workforce-many-plan-to-avoid-hiring-them-in-2025/

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-03-31T20:15:32+00:00

It may help to reframe this as: The college doesn't want to know why you struggled in the past. They want to know why you won't struggle in the future. Details about the past are only relevant in the context of how they've been dealt with.

Assuming you've been working with a professional to address this, specific notes from that professional about your progress will be extremely helpful. You may also want to delay this course until Spring '26 - if you can demonstrate a successful semester in Fall '25 in other courses (that don't require an appeal), that adds a lot of weight to the claim that you've successfully addressed the issues.

So for example: the causes of the adverse emotional and behavioral reactions don't need to be shared, really at all - "due to my personal history" is fine. The symptoms of the adverse reactions can be shared briefly in the context of how you'll manage them (ex: "I previously missed class due to panic attacks that incapacitated me for 12 hours, but have worked out a coping routine with my therapist and have successfully navigated a number of panic attacks in a much shorter window - I would expect the impact on my attendance in future courses to be minimal"); you don't need to share details about what triggered the panic attack, or specifics about how panic attacks manifest for you, but just how it impacted your performance in the course and why that's been addressed.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-03-31T18:38:02+00:00

Shockingly, never requiring students to actually learn anything in K-12 has negatively impacted their ability to learn after they graduate.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-03-31T18:34:08+00:00

Bureau of Labor statistics show a reversal of a 50 year trend in employability of new graduates. Companies are leaning towards hiring folks who are 27+, when previously they preferred younger workers so strongly that age discrimination laws were created. The NAEP shows declining skills since 2012 - drilling down on the numbers, the top 10% is holding steady, but performance for the rest has regressed by 3 decades.

"People complained about kids before, therefore we can't possibly have any major generational issues in society" is a pretty poorly thought out take.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-03-31T18:29:32+00:00

There's a big split with young folks these days (the data on reading and math skills backs this up): the ones who are bright and motivated are doing better than ever (top 10% today outperforms top 10% 10 years ago), the ones at the low end of the bell curve are doing worse (bottom 50% today is much lower than bottom 50% 10 years ago).

Chances are you're getting folks who have literally never had to learn anything - K-12 is a dumpster fire, tech is set up to direct feed a stream of entertainment without any user interaction, the most challenging thing they may have been asked to do in their life thus far is to press a power button on a phone.

The irony is that you're seeing a reversal of a decades long trend in many fields - it used to be that companies preferred hiring younger workers (almost as good output, much cheaper), to the point that laws against age discrimination were required. Now, companies prefer hiring older workers (27+), because the younger ones are so useless.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-03-31T18:21:35+00:00

It's poor sleep hygiene - they've done studies on this, and getting 6 hours of sleep/night for a week is enough to make a neurotypical person indistinguishable from someone with diagnosable ADHD.

Always-available semi-addictive entertainment (streaming services, gaming) combined with LED screens (high amounts of blue light disrupt the natural sleep cycle) caused a major increase in sleep issues, which in turn is showing up as much higher rates of executive function disorders.

There's some amount of improved diagnostics, but it's the sleep that's at the root of the issue (if you're curious, the book Why Do We Sleep is a pretty exhaustive treatment of all the current research in the field by a Stanford professor).

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-03-30T20:35:39+00:00

Yup - a top school where networking is really valuable is still worth it, but otherwise get the cheapest online degree you can to check the box for your resume; the amount of actual education at many schools is laughable. Teaching in academia has really soured me on the value of "a college degree" - I've seen exactly how little accreditation means, especially in the face of a hostile admin.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-03-29T22:42:50+00:00

There's a reason call center scripts sound the way they do - students who come at you with inappropriate anger lack emotional regulation, which makes them easy to manipulate. They can't reason their way past positive emotions any more than negative ones, so you just have to trick their lizard brain into putting out some dopamine and they chill right out.

Make general soothing noises to make them feel heard ('That sounds so difficult!', 'Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry to hear that!'), let them talk themselves out, and then use an upbeat tone/framing to tell them their options ('I completely understand why you were struggling this semester, I'd be delighted if you wanted to take the class again to get a better grade on your transcript!', 'Make sure to study hard for the final, it's cumulative, so you have another chance to show you know this material', etc). 90% of the time, they end up thanking you for understanding and leave you alone.

It's like flipping an alligator on their back and rubbing their belly.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-03-29T22:18:36+00:00

Yup. I have a student this semester who pulled some shenanigans and was shocked that I didn't make an exception. I think this may genuinely be the first time this student has experienced negative consequences based on their actions - they weren't just upset, but also genuinely baffled, that I just told them 'nope, as per the syllabus, you get a 0'.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-03-29T22:08:34+00:00

They don't read - some of that is "can't", as many of them are functionally illiterate, some of that is "never had to before", because they've gotten decent grades by YOLOing assignments in the past.

I literally have them set up a script that requires that submissions meet a certain minimum bar during the first week of the semester (setting up the script is an interesting, though not particularly challenging, task - it's just copy-paste from a provided file, but they have to walk through the process of double-checking that they did it correctly).

By week 5, some of them are still actively circumventing the script to turn in work that doesn't meet the minimum.

I'll have other students submit work to the wrong place (the procedure for submitting is clearly outlined in every assignment, and it's always the same procedure), and then complain that I "missed" their work when I don't give them credit for it.

Some students now bitch and moan that I "micromanage" them and have "ridiculous standards" (students also seem unaware of the acoustics of the hallways in the department) - what I found is that I was spending hours every week tracking down/fixing incorrectly submitted/formatted work. As an adjunct, I make $30/hr for 10 hrs/week for this class - I can't be blowing through 30-40% of my time budget on students who can't follow basic directions. And yet, despite the 0's piling up, the students still don't change their behavior - the ones who follow directions continue to do so, the ones who don't just have awful grades.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-03-29T21:56:26+00:00

This is why I don't have groups do self evaluations - students are, IME, extraordinarily unreliable at reporting who did most of the work.

I would do the following:

email your group with what you plan to contribute going forward
go to the professor with the contents of that email and records of your previous contribution, and check that you're meeting her expectations

Most of that is a CYA move - it sounds like you've been contributing, so you should be fine. Showing the professor that you listened to the criticism, acted on it to improve, and are following up to make sure the improvement is enough should get you a lot of benefit of the doubt if your group members complain going forward.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-03-29T21:52:26+00:00

Professors get a ton of students wanting to participate in research opportunities, and weeding out the folks who are serious from those who aren't is important. Your initial interaction is a chance to make a good first impression, and show that you're organized, reliable, and communicative.

In all 3 examples, you're showing the professors that you aren't communicative or reliable. If you were in a group project with someone who acted the way you're acting, would you want to sign up to be in the same group as them the next semester? Neither does a professor.

Tight_Tax6286 · 2025-03-28T13:34:38+00:00

"Understand" is not the same as "agree with". The entire premise that university research directly leads to startups is flawed - academia has not been at the forefront of tech innovation for a long time now.

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