No Good Deed...

There are days when I honestly believe the #1 problem with teaching is the students. I swear to you I have the biggest crop of whiners this term that I have ever encountered.

I was generous to one student whose program worked but was implemented essentially completely wrong. And by completely, I mean that had you ever done this in "the real world" people would assume you didn't understand how to code. But since they had the right output and they kind of demonstrated what I was looking for them to demonstrate understanding of, I only took off one point. Next day? Nasty gram in my email ripping me up one side and down the other about "inconsistencies between what I want things to be and the rubric." Because they misunderstood why the ONE point got taken off. So I explained further. And erased the part about how I felt like going back and giving them the grade they earned according to the rubric. Cause honestly, they *should* have gotten about a 50%.

Another student whined and complained All. Week. about how they didn't understand how to use the particular coding structure we needed to use in this assignment. Could they come to office hours? No. Could they send me their code and we could go back and forth over email? No. So they did it a different way. I reminded them that they needed to do it the required way and sent all but the answer to them with explanations. Insert more complaining and veiled threats with the turned in project. Which used the proper structure. Really? You got it to work the right way with the right structure and you're still kvetching?

I guess I should just be glad they care about their education? Or at least, they care about their GPA...not sure they actually care about *learning* anything.