Saw this on twitter. Made me laugh


I emailed a student who hadn't submitted a big project. Her response?

"Im quite alright not passing this class. Thanks for checking in"

Honestly, I find it kind of refreshing.

When I was a TA, I'd have students come in with a straight face and ask, "what's the minimum I have to do to pass this class"?

They weren't embarrassed in the slightest. I suppose you might think it was honest, but I thought it was kind of sad. I should also note that the course I was teaching was intro to applied stats (baby stats), not something like o-chem.

I mean... if the student didn't do the work, and is ok with not passing, well, they're adults (mostly) so I guess that's ok. It's much better than a student who doesn't do the work but still expects an A...

Some people know what they want and deprioritize conventional expectations.

My favorite case of that was right when I was starting out in the job, back at Colgate in the 1980s. I had a student who sat in the back of my international economics class. He did very little work, just enough to scrape by with a D. Yet he seemed very knowledgeable about global financial markets.

I started seeing him in the gym during the semester, and we got to talking. Turns out he was already a swaps trader, and was rebuilding a hotel in Thailand as a side business. He was 20. He knew much more about the practical side of markets than I did. All he wanted was the sheepskin. It helped his credibility.

When he finished his degree he went on to work for a major French bank doing interest rate swaps and making a fortune.

I was apparently the only graduate school journalism professor handing out Cs. There were some intense negotiations with a couple of students, I can tell you.