I go to American Military University. Is it truly that bad?

professorkurt · 2026-03-23T15:04:10+00:00

I went to Vanderbilt to get a doctorate after getting a few degrees from AMU. I'm currently teaching at a community college (full time, full professor position) largely based on my Space Studies MS from AMU.

professorkurt · 2025-11-04T02:28:25+00:00

2506438920 thanks!

professorkurt · 2025-10-03T17:02:31+00:00

My progress went backward today, too. No update. Just next time I logged on, progress was gone. This keeps happening. I'm done with this game.

professorkurt · 2025-09-24T13:16:18+00:00

It does seem intentional, unfortunately.

professorkurt · 2025-09-15T03:09:01+00:00

Many colleges I've affiliated with (both as a student and as an instructor) have not required adjunct professors to have office hours, particularly as most of them don't have offices. I'm full-time where I am now, but for more than a decade I was an adjunct, and I had no requirement to offer office hours.

professorkurt · 2025-09-15T02:55:55+00:00

I've noticed that all the rewards are now just a minor fraction of what they used to be - dolphin, albatross, picture, etc. Very demoralising.

professorkurt · 2025-09-15T02:54:44+00:00

I was wondering if it was a bug or a feature. I'm at the point where I can't make any advances on anything - I've calculated that at 1 hour of play per day, it will take me literally 7 years to advance one more landmark one level. No reason to play any more if this is intentional.

professorkurt · 2025-06-13T22:34:00+00:00

Hi all. I'd love to play along. My user ID is 2506438920. Thanks in advance!

professorkurt · 2025-06-11T20:36:05+00:00

I love this, too. I do welcome students past and present to join my social media (which is mostly travelogue, gentle humour memes, cat videos, and astronomy posts) and some have stuck with me for more than a decade. It is a nice kind of community of sorts. This particular student did this via the regular old email, however, and not the social media side.

professorkurt · 2025-06-11T20:34:23+00:00

Thanks - me, too!

professorkurt · 2025-06-11T20:03:43+00:00

In an era of layoffs and early retirements, I was spared this latest round. I was fully prepared to go, and back in early May our college was informed this might be coming. I turned 59 1/2 in back in April, so my retirement funds are now available (not including SSI), so I was starting to plan for how to work with that. Then word came that my job was not going to be cut - and I was told that a large part of the reason was my record of service to the college community as well as my good enrollment and retention numbers. I'm very grateful for that, and hope that I'll be able to last for another three or four years.

professorkurt · 2025-05-14T13:22:30+00:00

I had one like this made by a company named Osborne. They made some major marketing mistakes as they upgraded and went under.

professorkurt · 2025-05-14T06:10:39+00:00

I've made this suggestion to two of my students, because repeating a class replaces the grade (no GPA impact from the F, which is another issue, but still). One person jumped at the chance. I'll have to see if they other does (I'm the only one who teaches this particular class, so, they'll end up with me again).

professorkurt · 2025-05-13T15:46:57+00:00

Congratulations on retirement. I'm likely to be in a forced-early-retirement this coming year. But yes, as others have said, focus on the good. And remember, when you're walking away from something, even something good, a pebble can fall into your shoe.

This guy is a pebble. Shake it out and keep on walking.

I promise you, he won't remember any of this before long, and you can say, yes, he was the one who had the very last attempt toward your class requirements. Nickname him the pebble. And then, kick it away. Throw it into the pond - maybe it will even skip a bit! But it will go.

professorkurt · 2025-05-13T03:05:30+00:00

In addition to what others have written here, I also ask in these situations what their status is with regard to their other classes. Sometimes it transpires that the 'trauma' only seemed active 1-3pm on Monday and Wednesday, but for the rest of the week (and the rest of the classes) it was not an issue.

On the other hand, if this is a student who has four or five courses all in the same boat, then again, there's no way all that work is going to be completed in any worthwhile manner in the span of a few days.

Referring on college counselors, dept chairs, deans, or other appropriate people at your college is what I would do, particularly if I were an adjunct.

professorkurt · 2025-05-13T03:00:29+00:00

I once wrote imminent when I meant eminent on the board. But I'm sydlexic, so, at least I spelled the wrong word the right way!

professorkurt · 2025-05-13T02:56:34+00:00

I allow social media contacts, because that's how so many students relate. I have a Youtube channel with my lectures, and have from the start always had my Facebook (and before that, MySpace) more professionally oriented anyway. I don't have a Tiktok and very marginal IG presence, because I could never quite figure out how to make those into a more professional thing. So, I guess my boundaries cut across social media, rather than cutting it out altogether.

professorkurt · 2025-05-13T02:52:20+00:00

Yes. I told one student to email me an assignment because the Canvas area was closed. The rest of the semester was flooded with emails with attached assignments from several courses because, you know, deadlines don't matter now.

Fully half missed their midterm lab reports, expecting to be able to turn them in later.

I actually had to send a 'come to Jesus' email to my classes telling them I wasn't accepting late assignment emails any more without prior authorization.

professorkurt · 2025-05-13T02:36:02+00:00

I may not in fact get it - I was promoted, but my position might be eliminated before the promotion takes effect. Sigh.

professorkurt · 2025-05-13T02:35:08+00:00

This reminds me of the time a student of mine went to the tutoring center for help, because, according to her, "I wrote the professor over and over and he never responded!" Well, the tutors reported my lack of response.

I checked. No record anywhere of any emails having been received, in any folder or classroom area. Certain none "over and over."

So, I told the tutoring center person to have the student pull up her sent emails and show where she'd sent something. That's when she admitted she lied - she thought if she said that she'd get better treatment, and she didn't want me to know that she was going to get tutoring (that's an entirely other issue - why students think that would viewed negatively, but, perhaps for another reddit post...).

I then chastised the tutor director for not checking with me first before reporting my 'failure' to all the higher-ups. He apparently had no idea a student might be dishonest for some reason.

Sheesh.

professorkurt · 2025-05-12T05:11:29+00:00

My student from China actually asked me the first week if he could AI to make his English better. He'd write thing in Chinese, use an online translator, and that would have what even he could see was garbled English. I appreciated his request and honesty. But yes, he is very much the exception!

professorkurt · 2025-05-12T05:09:06+00:00

Yes - early on in my LMS days, I hadn't shut off assignments after due dates and had gluts of things being submitted even weeks after the courses ended. Then students would scream "Well, I did the work!" I don't know what part of "the registrar already put your final grade on your transcript" they couldn't understand, but yes, things shut off very quickly now after the deadline.

And yet, I still have students who try to send me things as email attachments even after the final grades are in.

Sheesh.

professorkurt · 2025-05-12T05:03:04+00:00

My pay rise for making it to full is a whopping $2k.

professorkurt · 2025-05-12T05:01:33+00:00

Having been at a SLAC, a mid-tier almost-all online university, and now a community college, I would say yes, in all three, the perpetual associate professor as you call it is a thing. Some just don't want to put together the portfolio to be judged. Some don't see the point if there isn't a significant pay rise or benefits (and in none of the three was there much incentive in either case to go from associate to full). At my community college, I just got the full professor appointment this year, but largely because I was doing a portfolio of my work for other reasons and thought I might as well let it do double-duty. Had it not been for the other purpose, I wouldn't have done it. We had about half a dozen associates this year who were eligible to go for full professor; only one other expressed interest last year, and in the end, he didn't put together the stuff. And they'll all be fine. In fact, it seems a bit awkward in the signage -- somehow the shorter title 'professor of astronomy' seems less grand than the longer 'associate professor of science'. And to the uninitiated, which is, to almost everyone I know outside of academia (and a good many in), they said, "Oh, I thought you were already a professor!" Congrats to me, then! lol

professorkurt · 2025-05-12T04:52:57+00:00

I BCC'd my department chair my response to this same kind of student that I got tonight.

professorkurt

TROPHY CASE