It CAN hurt to ask
in which I rant about the negative externalities of student desperation.
Forgive me readers. It has been one month and one week since my last post. I can only plead end-of-the year. If you are a professor like me, you are hip-deep in finals and student excuses. If you are a student, you are hip-deep in anxiety and powerpoint slides and hopefully not in bed with Chatgpt.
One prof I know actually had a student email and ask if that one part of his grade that was really good (as opposed to the other parts that were abysmal) could just . . . “bear with me now” . . . be his whole grade?
Wow. Here’s a rule of thumb if you are thinking of asking your prof if she would throw out any part of the syllabus that she pain-stakingly typed out just for you—that’s a No, Dog.
Of course any of the thirteen economists I know will tell you why profs get inundated with these sorts of requests. There are no costs to the student, only the professor. This is what economists call an externality. The person exacting the cost doesn’t have to pay for much of it. Like Pollution.
Students have elevated “It can’t hurt to ask” to an art form. There is no downside to asking for the student. All the professor can do is say “Nah.”
There is a cost,however (there is always a cost, those same economists will remind us) and . . . here me out, now . . . to the professor! The first two or three of these “It can’t hurt” questions per semester are entertaining.
I’ll let you in on a secret students, we pass them around to colleagues and have a laugh at the gall of the student who came to class maybe half the time and never engaged with a single discussion or gave even the smallest hint that they had done the reading, suddenly chunks a “hail mary” from the two yard line with 10 seconds left because “Hey, it can’t hurt to ask.”
Yes, oh monarch of Slackerdom, it can. After about the fourth or fifth one of these outrageous, tone-deaf, buzzer-beaters, it’s not so funny anymore. It gets mentally taxing for most of us. Economists call this a “negative externality”
I’ve been teaching for 25 years. I started teaching highschool and the advice I got from veteran teachers was
“Don’t smile till Christmas” and “It easier to be tough and then mellow over the semester than it is to start off lenient and then get tougher.”
I’ve noticed this attitude was not confined to the short arc of a school year but the trajectory of a career. I started off quite tough. I said harsh things so my students wouldn’t think me soft while agonizing over their grades and how I could help them improve. Turns out being “hard” on students is very tiring.
The quintessential tough professor when I was growing up was embodied in a law school professor. Kingsfield in The Paper Chase (1973) was terrifying as played by John Houseman.
Old Movie Warning for you younglings
Kingsfield calls one student, who didn’t do the reading for class,up to the podium in front of everyone. He hands the student a dime and says “Call your mother and tell her you have serious doubts about you ever becoming a lawyer.
(Back in ancient times at the dawn of the world, younglings, you could make a call on something called a “payphone” and, at first,it cost a dime.)
No one told me keeping this face all the time is exhausting
As I transitioned from highschool teacher to professor, I realized I don’t have it in me to be Kingsfield. Kingsfield would probably never get tenure in an age of student evaluations, anyway.
I worried too much about what students thought of me. That waned somewhat with tenure but no one ever told me it would be hard to care less after tenure when you spent so much time before tenure worried if Johnny would pass, for your sake, but also for his.
Another secret students, most of us want our students to do well. We get no points,joy, or giggles out of failing you. Show us an ounce of respect, give us half-a-chance, and a show up for the appointments you make during office hours; we will move heaven and earth to help you pass.
Here’s the catch, you gotta do it early on in the semester. You can’t suddenly care at the end. That’s not caring, that’s desperation and it is kind of insulting.
And exhausting because I have to channel my inner Kingsfield and I don’t wanna.