End of the Semester Letter to Clueless Students

As I waited for the bus home yesterday, I listened to two students discussing the negatives of a couple of their instructors, one a French teacher and the other an English teacher. I found it amusing the students were upset with two language teachers, and I wondered if they had anything negative to say about their math teachers or science teachers. The gist of the conversation was both the French teacher and the English teacher have no idea how to teach.

When I hear students tearing away at an instructor, my first thought is and what, exactly, is your expertise in the area? You, at 18 years old with say, what, maybe 100 hours of writing experience to your name? And that 100 hours is probably a generous amount given how most students, probably even the two students loudly proclaiming how awful their French and English teachers are, claim they write papers in the hour before they are due.

If what the students claim is actually true, this means if a student has written five papers each semester of high school, that's 40 papers for a high school career, each written an hour before it was due, so the student spent a total of 40 hours during the four-year period writing those papers. So yeah, the 100 hours is quite generous.

Forty hours of the 157,680 hours that make up the student's eighteen years of living.

40.

After thinking about this, here is my response to the two very opinionated, presumptuous students:

You are young. You have, most likely, been told your entire life you are perfect. From the tone of your voice and the way you are making sure everyone around you can hear your conversation, you believe you are very, very important, and you know far more than your French teacher and your English teacher.

Entitled much? Perhaps the real problem, dear student, is you. Perhaps you need to stop the whining, stop trying to find fault with the teacher, and look closely at your own behavior. Perhaps you need to go to work on yourself.

Start by actually showing up for class. Every. Single. Class. Period. After this, do the assigned readings. This means sitting down and reading each and every word of the text. As you read, take notes. Then, when you return to class you just might be able to engage in the discussion.

What? You aren't interested in the material? STFU and do it. The readings are assigned for a reason. While that reason might not make sense to you at first, it just might by the time the end of the semester rolls around and you see the progression made through the class. But to see this, you actually have to show up for class. Every. Single. Class. Period. And you actually have to complete the readings. Every. Single. Word. Then you have to engage, truly take part in the class, unpacking the information you read. If you don't do these three things, you don't get to complain.

Oh, and put the cell phone away while you're in class. If you can't go an hour and fifteen minutes without checking Instagram or Snapchat or whatever other social media you take part in, perhaps you're really not mature enough to attend college. Perhaps you need to just find a job and work for a year or two before attending college.

What? You're a master multitasker? Sorry, Charlie. You can't look at the latest viral meme and hear what the teacher is saying about the test due the next class period. The majority of your attention is on the meme. In fact, it's so funny you want to share it with your three closest friends. In the process, you just missed that the test is to be done online and turned in via the LMS before the beginning of the next class period. When you show up for class and haven't completed the test because you thought it was going to be taken during class, when you find out you're getting a 0 on that test, you don't get to complain because you were too busy sharing that viral meme instead of listening to the instructions from your instructor.

So, like I said, instead of trashing your teachers, giving off attitude that you can teach better than they can, check yourself. Most likely, they aren't the real problem here. Most likely, the problem is with you.

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