another one for the "why the hell does this stuff surprise me?" category, or: Rambling Rant of Rage #314

Why am I surprised, for example, that students are too lazy even to sit through a fucking movie to get extra credit? Give me a break. Come to a classroom, sign a fucking attendance sheet, stay sitting in the room the whole time, leave.

That's apparently too much effort for lots of people.

I mean, wtf? Sleep the whole time if you want to. Sit there and text your lazyass friends if you want to.

But all you have to do for credit is get your ass to a classroom, keep it in a chair for two hours, then take it back home.

I'm the idiot who urged other instructors last year when we started this crap not to worry about having students write a composition or anything after attending extra credit events. I felt (and still feel) that the exertion of attending and the added exposure to the language and culture were worthy of the credit in and of themselves and that more students would take advantage of it (and thereby benefit not just from the EC but -moreover- from that same language/culture exposure) that way. And then I'm surprised when -yet again- students show themselves to be largely lazy and lacking pretty much any integrity whatsoever.

Thirty students arrived at the beginning of the movie. I returned to my office to work while it was playing. When I returned to the classroom at the end there were about 15 people still there (by my very quick headcount).

The real reason this stuff surprises me, of course, is that for whatever reason, notwithstanding all my bitching and moaning in here and elsewhere, my viewpoint towards the student population remains mostly optimistic - down deep inside at least. I inexplicably imagine all these wonderful events where people start getting all psyched about French and France and Francophone cultures and everyone wants to start getting together for French folksong singalongs and waxing nostalgic about Prévert together or some stupid shit... OK not that far but I do imagine people actually liking the movies or at least seeing it as a painless way to get extra credit.

But no. Why even stay and give yourself the chance to like a movie when you could fucking cheat and leave?

And no, really it's not just the fact that I think people who aren't automatically overcome by the Magic of All Things Francophone are unfathomable... I am still equally taken aback by mere irresponsibility where homework or just fulfilling standard course requirements are concerned. A handful of my students recently turned in workbooks where instead of even trying to complete activities as intended, thereby getting some much-needed practice with the stuff they didn't pay any attention to in class, but instead proceeded simply to copy over the question cues, hoping I would see that all blanks in the assignments were filled with a reasonable amount of handwriting and not notice that nothing was conjugated or answered or anything. Is it a problem with me or with today's students that I experienced a nearly visceral amount of shock? Are we really becoming a society where in order to get the least possible exertion out of all your students you have to spend more and more time countering not only laziness but even actual deceit, at the most minimal level of responsibility, that of practicing a few grammar skills (graded merely on completion, mind you) that are only worth 10% of the total course grade anyway? (And what does it say about me that I think that at least if a student cheated on something big I would kinda almost understand it - that is I would understand that they were driven by stress and fear at least rather than solely by sloth and apathy.)

The other thing that really irks me is that this touches on one of my biggest general (i.e. not just at school but in society at large) pet peeves: that of people just not fucking doing what they're supposed to do. Like people who don't put grocery carts where they're supposed to go, or people who arrive at the post office with their fucking packages completely not taped up so that everyone else has to wait while the way-too-fucking-accommodating PO employee helps them by lending them tape and waits while they not only tape but finish addressing their fucking package (note that this is primarily seen here in Dixie - no self-respecting Cleveland PO employee, for example, would cater to that shit), or people who get in the wrong lane and then think nothing of making 30 cars wait while they butt into the correct one, or... (I could go on).

Why don't people just do what they are supposed to do? Maybe because college instructors finally just give up in their fight against generation after generation of increasingly self-centered, entitled, lazy, dishonest and dishonorable students.

...And the thoughts of returning to retail surface once again. No, you're right, I wouldn't really. But part of me really does resent (maybe this is another crucial part of why this bugs me so much?) the fact that here I am, doing what I honestly think I was put on this earth to do, livelihood-wise anyway ('cause we've already ascertained that I can't make a living sitting around journaling and baking and making quilts and reading and watching Jane Austen adaptations, unfortunately, or by hanging out in French cafés, either, more's the pity) and lazyass irresponsible dishonest people are fucking it up for me! I just want to teach French dammit, and have students whom I don't have to police constantly on 600 different levels!

Putain de merde.