I am Unsure if the Kids are All Right

In fact, I know they're not. A Semester-in-Review.

Every generation laments the downfall of their successors. I am a Millennial, and as far as I’m aware, we’re still being blamed for everything, including the demise of the diamond industry and paper towels even as we push 40.

While there is definitely much ribbing I could do on behalf of my Gen Z students, I am also genuinely concerned about them. And not just in a ‘I am your teacher and am worried about you and your development,’ way. Think: “I am not sure how some of you are functioning as human beings right now and I’m not sure what I can do to help” way.

Needless to say, I’ve learned a lot about myself, my students, and the current state of American higher education this past semester. When I submitted my final grades last Tuesday night, my reaction was to pour myself a glass of limoncello in a cold glass, down it, and then go to bed.

Salve’s pretty, I guess.

---

Class

Some background: the students I taught were (mostly) freshmen. I was teaching what is called a UNV class for Salve Regina - effectively a First Year Writing seminar. There were a few assignments I had to incorporate, namely a research paper and a self reflective essay, but otherwise, I was given a wide berth to create my own course. Hence Dangerous Words.

Dangerous Words: Book Bans, Censorship and Disinformation in a Digital World

I was genuinely excited by the topic - it was a way to combine all of my interests: writing, books, and political science. I wasn’t given much guidance on developing my reading list or course, but as I explained to an adult student a few weeks ago, I overthink everything. I sent out my reading list to fellow educators and writers and asked for opinions before finalizing it. So even if Salve was attempting to engender spontaneity in its lecturers, that wasn’t ever going to happen with me. I have no chill.

Now, for the logistics. This is necessary so you understand how and why I started to lose my sanity as the semester progressed. I live in Providence. Salve is in Newport. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, know that I needed an hour to get to work. One way. And there were a few bridges I had to go over, and they’re all a mess right now. So for my 8am class, I was getting up at 6am.

It should be illegal to have class before 9am

My tagline as a professor teaching an 8am class was: I’m awake and ready to make it everyone’s problem. While it may seem unfair for me to complain about the consequences of an agreement I willingly entered into, that has never stopped me before. So why now? In all sincerity, my 8am class was lovely. They generally participated and tolerated my bad jokes. I also had more students genuinely interested in the course material in my 8am class than my 1pm class.

My 1pm class was the albatross around my neck. They would not talk. You think you understand what that statement means, but let me reiterate it: They. Would. Not. Talk. I’d ask a question to the group, and would stand for a full minute waiting for a response. Halfway through the semester, I threatened them with Cs for participation grades (20% of their overall grade!) as I was baffled. They wouldn’t respond to direct questions. They wouldn’t talk in small groups. They wouldn’t reply to online assignments. There was just…no response. No interaction. It seemed like they thought that ‘participation’ was sitting there and staring at me as I talked.

I am only mildly exaggerating here. The class of 18 was carried by 5 women. No surprises there. This folks, is where I started to see the impacts of the pandemic. My students were freshman, except for the one senior in my 8am section.¹ This means that they were freshmen and sophomores during the worst of the pandemic lockdowns, completing half of their high school education on Zoom. I talked with fellow educators to see if I was the only one experiencing this lack of participation and general disinterest. Needless to say, I was not.

One tutor theorized that because half of their high school education had been on Zoom, these students had begun to believe that they could just sit and absorb information without having to actively partake in their education. My own anecdotal experience checks out on this. I had to explain to one young woman that her participation grade was doing poorly because she had not turned in any of her in class assignments. (Aside from the fact that she wasn’t talking in class and was missing at least one class out of 3 per week.) She was shocked that she had to actually turn in the materials we did in class. Regardless of the fact that I STATED SO IN PERSON AND IN THE ASSIGNMENT ITSELF.

I’m not going to pretend I know what it was like to have done Zoom class during the pandemic. Honestly? I’m sure it sucked. At the time, I was a software trainer, and even teaching adults remotely was challenging. So I’m trying to withhold judgment on a group who clearly got the short end of the stick here. However, by the end of February my empathy was dwindling. Getting up at 6am to teach disinterested students was wearing on me.

Because in addition to this, I was teaching remedial grammar. After grading their first two papers, I had to give my students a lecture emphasizing the following:

• what proper nouns are and why they need to be capitalized

• how to use commas

• what conjunctions are

• how to properly use punctuation in dialogue

• how to use spellcheck

Oh you thought I was joking? Here’s a slide from that lecture.

My working theory is that the majority of my students use Google Docs, which does not automatically run spellcheck like in Microsoft Word. Even so, by the end of the semester, I was begging them to do so. By the time I was grading their research papers, I became ruthless. I’m sorry, but there’s no excuse for not capitalizing things.² I was getting papers that did not have their bibliographies alphabetized, never mind with proper hanging indents. I cross-checked with other educators to make sure I wasn’t huffing paint - are my standards too high? Am I being unreasonable? When faced with an onslaught of the same behavior, it’s easy to think that you’re the one in the wrong.

Forgive me for saying so - but this is all middle school and high school level curriculum. As a college lecturer, I shouldn’t have to re-teach basic grammar or how to do a bibliography. I am certainly not being paid enough to do so. Even worse, my students had a session with the librarian on how to do research and create bibliographies.

The longer the semester went on, the greater the shenanigans became:

• I had a few students try to tell me they could not turn in an *ungraded* rough draft on time because they would be on a plane. Sorry to say folks, but there is wifi on planes now. Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.

• I had no fewer than three students have ‘emergency surgeries’ that meant they could not turn in papers on time.³

• While I generally try to have a lax attendance policy (for both disability and covid reasons), some students just did not show up for half the classes with no reasoning or notice, then would have the utter gall to email me with questions about assignments and directions I had covered in class.

• I had one student tell me that they 1) did not do rough drafts and 2) they were thinking of writing their research paper on 1984, and were, quote, ‘going to watch the movie’ to get a better idea of what the book was about. I had to inform him that, no, that would not cut it, and he had to read the book.

  • Side note: if you are going to try to pull this with one of your professors, don’t tell us.

• I had one student turn in a rough draft that was half AI and half a paper he had already used for a previous assignment. I read them all the riot act the next day.

• One student just…didn’t show up for the final exam. Didn’t do it.

The lack of effort was truly appalling. What finally put me over the edge was showing up to one 8am class towards the end of the semester and seeing only 5 out of my 16 students there. 5. Out of 16. I had woken up at 6am for this. I drove 2 hours a day to and from class. Why was I putting in so much effort for students who clearly did not care? My colleagues and I joked that there’d be no protests on our campus because our students couldn’t even get themselves organized enough to come to class. Aside from the rampant absenteeism, this apathy translated into their papers, too, which included some truly stunning factual inaccuracies:

1. Not only is Jackie Robinson spelled wrong, (again! Spellcheck!) but *clears throat* KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR IS STILL ALIVE. Bill Russell only died a few years ago! Their careers and advocacy were not HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO.

   

   2. Ah yes, this one. The infamous lamppost paper. Once you get past the lampposts, let me draw your attention to ‘Arabia and Islam got involved.’ One - Arabia is not a thing (at least not in the way that is being described) and two - Islam does not make any sense here. If I, a supremely white lady, am telling you this is wrong and needs to be changed, then you should change it! This showed up in this student’s rough draft and I told her to fix it. She did not.

   

   3. The following paragraph then included this gem. Last I checked, the Ottoman Empire was dissolved after WW1. 1922, to be exact. This paper is about the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in the 1990s and Desert Storm. No. This was also flagged in the rough draft, and was also not changed.

   

   4. “George Orlov.” No.

   

   5. Once again, factually incorrect. Brave New World is written in Third person. That first person he’s describing? That’s dialogue.

   

Again, I am left wondering - how do you not double check whether or not something you’re writing is factually accurate? Especially when you have the ability to check everything at your fingertips with this beautiful thing called the internet? What baffled me most was that I made myself available. Constantly. I didn’t go home between classes, so I was always on campus. I sent emails. I posted reminders on Canvas. I reiterated due dates and ways they could reach me. If they needed help, students could come to me. They never did.

This is where I am going to try to extend some grace. This generation was handed a bad deck, education wise. (See previous note on Covid) They clearly need more emotional and mental support than I am able (or willing to give.) This is the rub - I am an Adjunct. I am not getting paid enough to help remediate the education that these students lost. Since the US does not have a standardized education curriculum at the federal level, my students have a patchwork background. Some of them were performing at the collegiate level. Some of them were decidedly not. And the response to Covid was not uniform across the states, meaning there’s no way for me to know 1) what support they did or did not receive and 2) what their needs are. Especially when they’re not being vocalized TO ME.

While I am sure that there were absolute shenanigans when I was in college, I don’t recall this level of absurdity. Sum told, I had to fail 2 young women, and had to give out a handful of Cs. Otherwise, my students did decently and got As and Bs. True to my word at the beginning of the semester: if you do the work, you will pass. The rest is just a question of your effort.

I do want to end on a positive, though. I had no issues with behavior. None. Zero. (Unless we’re counting attendance.) No one was disrespectful to me, or their fellow classmates. (Again, unless we’re talking about my time.) There were no insults, no yelling, no disruptions. No one swore at me or threatened to get the administration involved because they did not like the grade I gave them. Overall, they were highly respectful of themselves and each other, and I know that more than a few of them made close friendships amidst their classmates. Hearing two young women from Syria talk in Arabic every day before class made my heart swell just a little bit.

---

Teacher

Now, how am I doing? After grading ~150 papers in a very short time span, it’s only fair to ask. *eye twitches*

The driving to and from campus was the biggest hurdle. I now had 2 dead hours in my car every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I did try to listen to audiobooks and podcasts, but as you know, I’m not a great audio processor, so mostly I defaulted to music. I also had to pay so much in tolls, because going over the bridge into Newport is not free and the non-toll bridge is basically falling apart. Aside from me being unable to just exist without doing something productively, my joints hated it.

I do generally like being on college campuses and I do like the atmosphere in academia. But I am never getting a PhD, and would rather teach students who want to talk about books and writing. So, what does this mean teaching for me going forward?

A special Mug Moment in honor of the tumbler I got while a student at Salve.

Well first of all, I’m not teaching this pair of classes again, for a variety of reasons.⁴ I would prefer to teach at my local library, or at continuing education programs, or at an independent living facility. The people who show up to those actually want to be there, and that’s when I get the most joy out of teaching. That’s when I leave feeling invigorated, not when I’m sighing in defeat because 12 college freshman have spent all of class time on their computers clearly not paying attention to me. Hopefully, I will one day teach in MFA programs, which would really be the goal. I’m not sure I can teach at higher undergrad levels without a PhD, but if given the option, that’d be what I’m interested in.

I also learned how to deal with AI this semester. For a variety of reasons, I’m not super concerned about the robots taking over the world. Yet. I have tricks on how to defeat ChatGPT if you want them. (Message me directly - I’m not sharing them widely because we need to strategize effectively to defeat the robots.) But please believe me when I tell you it is incredibly obvious when you use AI to write a paper.

My own enjoyment of books dwindled, and as of this writing, I’m 8 books behind on my yearly goal. You have no idea how much this makes me wince. Because I was reading student papers analytically, I wasn’t reading new books. I was using the majority of my brain power on providing feedback to my students, not working on my own reading list. In fact, I just kept re-reading portions of books I had already read⁵ because I knew how they would end and I wouldn’t have to put any extra thought into it. Plus they made me happy, and student papers (like the ones exhibited above) did not always make me happy. So now I’m using my extra hours not spent grading or lesson planning to playing catch up. This is an effective use of my time, promise.

Now, for what helped me through the semester. As the photo above suggested, I had a trusty tumbler accompany me to class. It was week 2 when I realized Oh, I can go into the dining hall and get hot water. I don’t have to wait until after class to get tea! I may not drink coffee, but I am truly not a person without my morning tea. Having my pomegranate green tea during my 8am class took it from unbearable into manageable.

I got this steady steed from the Salve bookstore back in 2018 when I started my Master’s. And boy, while she was appreciated, she leaked everywhere.

Exhibit A.

So this mug has sadly gone onto the great Mug Heaven in the sky. When I went to go replace it, I discovered to my utter horror that the bookstore does not carry tumblers any more and only carries Stanley Cups, which I will not be buying because 1) I’m not cool and b) I already own 5 reusable water bottles.

And, finally, there was Squirmy. Who is Squirmy, you ask? Well a kitty that dwelt in one of the buildings I taught in.⁶ Behold, my favorite saga of the semester.

I kept it together for Squirmy’s sake, kept showing up to see the important kitty news. Unfortunately, I don’t know if Evil Squirmy ever returned Squirmy, as there were no further updates. Alas. I hope Squirmy is out there doing well, wherever they are. As for me, I’ll be wrapped on my couch in a blanket burrito, catching up on books, wondering what the deal is with refusing to use spellcheck.

1. This is a required class to graduate, and he had failed it as a freshman. His advisor told him to, and I quote, “wait to retake it as a senior,” which hand to God is the worst advice I’ve ever heard.

2. ESPECIALLY WITH THE INVENTION OF SPELLCHECK. *deep breath*

3. I am unsure as to the veracity of all of these surgeries. I did have one student be hospitalized and provide paperwork, so I am regarding these excuses skeptically.

4. Namely that I now have a full time job again.

5. ACOTAR and Fourth Wing for the win.

6. To be utterly clear here: no, I did not ever meet the cat. I just kept searching for these poster updates that would periodically appear.