And Yet, I Still Miss Teaching

A slightly redacted version of my favorite student complaint ever:

My Teacher,

I appreciate you taking your inconvenience to instruct us but I really had some problems in your class and I would like to explain them to you now.  Every day I wanted to discuss with you about the way you grade my papers and the way you teach the class, but I could not because the things you say in class and your words disturb me so much I can not.  You make me completely uncomfortable with the little things you say in the class like how you talk about television or how you talk about when you are grading our papers and trying to be fair.  You do not seem to care about our grades only that they are up to your too high standards and I can not talk to you because you make me completely uncomfortable.  For example, you say you will talk to us about our grades but you really will not because of how uncomfortable you make me feel with your words and what you say.

I will plan to contest the grade you have given me in this class when I get it because I know it will be much higher with any other teacher.  I am a very religious man and you are not a bad person but you do not choose your words with enough care like a teacher should.  You try to be objective and the very attempt becomes your flaw because you try so hard to grade fairly and comment wisely that you become biased to your own ideas.  You criticize our writings because we are college students and young but do not realize that you offend most of us when you do this.  I am always offended when I go to your class and have been on many occasions but I never tell you of my offense because you make me completely uncomfortable so I never say a word.

You like to lead discussions and that is bad because it is the entire means by which we learn but we do not know what you want from us on our papers.   I have honestly no idea what I learned from you in this class because so much time was spent discussing the tiny details in the passages in the book and so if I learned anything it is how to read things in too much detail.  I could have read books in too much detail on my own but that is not what I came to college to do because I already know how to read and I would have told you this but you make me completely uncomfortable with your words so I never said a word.

By doing this you give us no guidance on our papers.  I thought it was lame that you decided to show a movie and a cop out because you chose not to give us any instruction.  I know that it was a movie based on the story in the play we read but it was not teaching to show it to us when you could have been teaching us to write what you wanted us to write on our papers instead.  The movie was completely racist and very offensive because it contained cultural stereotypes that are often used in disrespectful jokes about people who have their feelings hurt all the time.  I was offended by this racism and in the movie and had my feelings hurt by it.  If that was supposed to teach me something about the class I completely do not understand.

After this quarter I am hurt and tired and feel like talking to you now will do me no good.  I wanted to go to your office hours but I could not find the time or make myself because of your words.  I feel like my paper was written to the best of my ability in reference to your teaching skills in the discussions.  You grade my papers poorly but do not realize that you do so because they reflect your teaching skills.  Other people may have done well with your skills but I did not and would have talked to you but what you said about grading fairly made me uncomfortable.  I take my responsibilities as a man and I have never complained about my grades but this one I will because I did not need you to teach me how to read or to write.  I have made very high grades in all my other writing classes and even though I had many disputes with those instructors we always settled them to my happiness.  Now for the first time I can not talk to you to settle my grades because I am uncomfortable to talk or even write to you.  I should have stayed strong and like a man no matter how much your words and what you said offended me.  I do not blame you because when there is error there are two to blame, the perceiver and the target.  I do not know what this email does but I have to get my feelings off of my chest.  Thank you for reading this and I am sorry if what I feel has shown you disrespect but these are my feelings and I feel by your words you did not respect them.  I love everyone and believe you to possibly be a great person but with your words you have treated me completely unfairly.

I am a very religious man and I love every one but I will forward this letter to the head of your department so he can see that I am a serious student who does not deserve the grade you will give him because I write so very well.

First, a Reply to Some Criticisms.

Second, Other Teacher/Student Interactions You Might Enjoy:

• [email protected]: an Epistolary Romance
• A Lexigraphical Lament about Probationer Prosody

Finally, check out the "Best of Acephalous" for more things that make you uncomfortable with their words and what they say.

Comments

[Walt]

That is the optimal student complaint. It can never be surpassed.

[A White Bear]

That is truly beautiful, Scott. Maybe now is the time to confess that, yes, you read in too much detail, and your words, your words, they make me uncomfortable.

[Sine.Qua.Non]

So, my teacher, is this for real? Seriously? How can you bear it as you make me so uncomfortable with your words.....that I never said a word.

I am sorry I am so very uncomfortably dense that you make me so uncomfortable that I never said a word.

Until he did, unfortunately, in written form.

~Sine

[A White Bear]

He does realize that this complaint is, indeed, in written form?

Whenever I get emails with prose like this in them (USUALLY IN ALL CAPS!!!!! WITH EXCLAMATION POINTS!!! AND SMILEYS :-D!!!), I get a little voice for that student in my head that aligns with his prose style. Then, unfortunately, my brain overlays that voice on top of everything they say out loud. So for the rest of the semester, all I hear from them is TEACHER THIS IS YOUR STUDENT FROM YOUR SURVEY CLASS I DONT KNOW WHATS GOING ON BECAUSE YOU DIDNT EXPLAIN IT TO ME I CANT DO THE READING!!!!! :-D

[Dragon Management]

Hah hah hah hah....

Tell this kid that HIS words make me uncomfortable.

And that his words hurt my brain...and my heart.

[Kerry]

It's almost poetic. Maybe a villanelle, with the repetition, or a Shakespearean sonnet, with slightly varied repetitions and the last two lines veering off. Perhaps a sestina, though there'd need to be six things to repeat, and so far I've only got "words."

This might be how you know you've been in grad school too long -- this, and the fact that I really latched onto "so if I learned anything it is how to read things in too much detail" and thought -- yes! He learned how to close read!

I'm seriously thinking of trying to turn this into a poem, if that wouldn't hurt your feelings or your religious sensibility. It will probably languish in the back of my mind, along with "Having a Cold with You" And other poems I've meant to write but haven't.

[Stacy McKenna Seip]

Please (PLEASE!) tell me this individual was not a native English speaker.

Personally, I find his blatant sexism pretty darn offensive. His words, they make me so uncomfortable.

[Mike Russo]

May one ask the possibly-great person what completely racist/very offensive movie was shown? Because I suspect further hilarity lurks that way.

[Note]

I agree with Kerry, there is almost a rhythm there, some sort of repetitive lap that has an aural quality... maybe in a more concise form it would make a nice Blues song.

[The Management]

This comment has been edited.

[eb]

Those lips that your own mouth did move
Breathed forth the sound that said "I grade,"
To me that anguished to improve.
But when I heard your words conveyed
Straight in my heart discomfort rose,
Shaking that pen that ever strong
Was used in writing graceful prose,
And taught it things it knew all wrong.
"I grade" you garbled without cease
And fouled it as rotting pomes
Doth foul a bunch, which, like old grease
From kitchen to dump is cast from homes.
"I grade" you thwarted with a care
That ruined your course, saying, "as fair..."

[mrh]

That is awesome. Makes me want to teach.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Very good, eb. But it needs less elegance.

Once within a classroom dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of a voice gently rapping, rapping about some writing chore.
`'Tis the TA,' I muttered, `rapping about some writing chore -
Only this, and nothing more.'

[...]

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `by Email, truly your instruction I deplore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently your voice flapping,
And incessant mapping, mapping of your lesson plans galore
That you make me quite uncomfortable - here I opened wide the door; -
For complaints and nothing more.

[...]

In your class I have been guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the incessent voice now burned into my brainstem's core;
More and more I sat divining, with my head slackly reclining
On how to get the grade that I could have gloated o'er
That GPA-gainful grade that I could be gloating o'er
But my marks, they are poor.

[...]

`Instructor!' said I, `thing of evil! - grader still, though but a devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God that I adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the final grading,
I shall clasp a higher rating then the one I had before -
Or the head of your department shall hear of it galore -
Quoth the TA, `Nevermore.'

(Are English department teaching grad students called TAs, as those in the sciences are? Oh well.)

[Karl Steel]

Rich: I think yes, mostly.

What's weird is the one place a non-robot vernacular erupts into his prose, the "I thought it was lame that you decided to show a movie and a cop out because you chose not to give us any instruction." Lame? Cop out? Why the slang here?

[Rich Puchalsky]

Karl, because at that point he was writing about a *movie*. All the rest were matters never addressed in life that he had to painfully construct a theoretical example of writing around, like a translation into Latin.

[Frowner]

Though I am a lurker and a non-teacher, I nonetheless find this very evocative:

even though I had many disputes with those instructors we always settled them to my happiness.

At the same time, assuming that this fellow isn't a native speaker of English I do perhaps feel a teensy bit sorry for him. I've taught college composition to non-native-speakers who were accustomed to a very, very different way of teaching, and I had a few student freak-out/meltdown situations on these lines (although much less lyrical, alas).

[Bourgeois Nerd]

Your words, they buuuuuuuurn!

[History Geek]

O_O

To quote one of my favorite TV shows: "The goggles. They do nothing."

How dare you speak words to him Scott and not asking him what grade he wanted. Can't you see he write so very well?

On the serious side, I've run across this attitude in my fellow undergrads. The more I like the Professor, the more chance it seems one of these will be in the class. This gentleman seems to be a non-native speaker (oh god please be a non-native speaker) but usually they seem to be entitled brat. They go on to their fellow students before class about how they've never receive anything lower than an A on a paper in High school and how their teachers told them they wrote on a college level.

Annoying enough in a survey class, but in upper level classes I start thinking of places to hide their body.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

No time to write this morning, but let me say this: the student is, in fact, a native speaker of the upper-class, Wonder Bread variety.

More later.