The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I hesitate to ramble about the “kids these days.” I find some people doing that, in reference to their classes, and I just find that kind of… wrong. I dunno, I was a Freshman. I did stupid-ass shit like this when I was in school. That’s why it took so long for me to graduate. I get it. It’s no less annoying to see happen, but I get it. My students are adults, and they can make their own decisions.

That said, seriously, kids these days.

The current assignment we’ve been doing all week involves two things, giving an in-class presentation of 5 to 7 minutes and turning in an MLA works cited list. I’m not grading this hard. If your presentation is long enough, you’re probably pretty good on the content. That’s half the grade. The other half is having the works cited in proper MLA format, since that’s what we were studying. Simply follow the MLA guidelines, and you’re golden.

My students aren’t doing either.

I’ve had presentations that were a minute or less. I’ve gotten tons of Works Cited lists that are wrong even at a glance, much less when I zoom in to the specifics when I actually grade them. It’s ridiculous. There are going to be so many shitty grades on this, and they’re going to be upset about it.
The worst part is that I warned them. I begged them in class, please take this seriously. The assignment was designed to be easy points to make up for harder essays. It’s supposed to be a help. But every time I assign it, I get this sort of stuff. It becomes a lesson about following the rules, which is useful, I suppose, but not my intention. I don’t want to have to give tough love in the classroom, but I guess that’s how it is.

So much of school is simple. You follow guidelines, you get a decent grade. Maybe not a great grade, without knowledge of what’s going on, but a good grade, at the very least. You just follow the rules. Students, please follow the rules. Then you’ll get a good grade. Please follow the rules.