How to Make Your Professor Happy

I figured that since lots of my readers are college-aged and college-enrolled, they might want to know a few ways to improve their grades for papers.

And for once, I am not even going to make the obvious joke about the entry title. I'm actually being serious; enjoy it while it lasts.

Professors were students once (a long time ago). We know what it's like, and we get reminded constantly by, well, you.

We know you're tired (or lazy) and want to be efficient (or cut corners), and that you don't want to do any more work than you have to (neither do we...).

But there are a few things you can do that will generally please your profs when you write papers, and I am going to share them with you.

Why? Because I'm tired of not getting them, and I'm tired of expending so much time and energy trying to make students act like students and responsible adults.

If the assignment is 4 full pages and stated as such in your syllabus, give me four FULL pages. It shows that you have attention to detail. It shows you read your syllabus. It shows that you are willing to do what you're asked. It shows you're not a lazy moron.

Did I say that or just think it?

Oh, and guess what, brain surgeon? NO, COVER PAGES DON'T COUNT TOWARDS THE TOTAL, you f@#$ing idiot.

If you give me a 'four' page paper with three full ones and one line on the fourth page, you have given me the absolute minimum possible.

Well guess what? 'D' is the minimum passing grade, so don't complain when I treat you like you treat me.Oh, and for the record, yes, we are smarter than you.We've reached the terminal end of a process you're no more than three years into.We teachwhat you learn. So in the scholastic setting, we are smarter and better and more advanced than you.

Even if we're not, and you're taking a class from an idiot, that still  makes you stupider than the idiot.

We don't think you're dumb (I went to a university where a doghad a student ID), we just don't want you thinking that you can impress us with flowery prose and long run-on sentences.

It  just tells us you're trying too hard or trying to burn up pages.  Speaking of trying too hard to be smart and ending up dumb... If you want to copy something from the internet, make sure you read and understand it.

Don't copy an article with the phrase "retributive context" in it without knowing or finding out what a retributive context is.Don't be embarrassed when we ask you to explain it in front of the class and you sit there dumbfounded like the fool you are. But don't youdare have the f@#$ing gall to call me inappropriate for calling you out, you lazy swine.Everyone has a right to be stupid, lazy, and a plagiarist, but they have to take the responsibility for doing so if they get caught. I know what class I teach. You know which class you're in. You want to make points? Try this:

John Q. Student        Assignment 0413        COM123

That's ONE LINE. Hit Return, Tab, and off you go. The Assignment # is the due date, so I know which one it is even if you write a paper every week.

 DON'T DO THIS:

Hugh Jass

COM123

Media, Sex and Dishrags

March 32, 2009

Assignment 1My Summer Vacation with Annie the Trannie in BangkokNotice the space between each line. This idiot burned off half a page. Which doesn't make him an idiot. What makes him an idiot is thinking that his prof doesn't know exactly why he did it. Don't be stupid.

Paragraphs are at least four sentences long.That's why they're called paragraphs. One-sentence paragraphs are SENTENCES.They are NOT paragraphs.

But if you use a couple Returns (Enter), and if you put a space between all your 'paragraphs,' that's 1/4 of a page.

Oh yeah, we never notice that trick. Youjackass .

I know that writing English is bad enough as a first language. And as a second, its worse. So I try to be fair and refrain from taking points off for 'wear' instead of 'where' because the spell-check won't catch it, and I realize that it would be unfair in some ways.

But...

When there are words without aspace between them (like that) or if a fairly common werd (!) is misspelled, it is Stupid StudentSecretCode for "I can't be bothered to spell check this @sshole's paper."

Attention to detail. Is that so frigging much to ask?

What if I don't spell check my grade book? B sounds almost exactly like D.

I can't be bothered if you can't.

Speaking of which, I loveit when students put more time, effort, and attention into their complaintabout a bad grade than on the steaming pile of dogsh*t they tried to pass off as collegiate work that they got the 'bad' grade for. 

You've only proven that you're lazy and disrespectful and selfish and, well, stupid. Because it's as transparent as glass that you were capableof the work but chosenot to do it. Bonehead.

So if you want to make your professor happy, show him/her/it that you spent a little time on your assignment and that you put your brain into it and you were thorough. These are life skills we're supposed to impart anyway, so where's the problem?

Think of it as a down-payment on a reference letter.I wish I didn't have to spend so much time and energy on all this sh*t. I've love to teach instead of babysit. I also know that most of my students don't do this crap. But some of them do, and it just makes things profoundly irritating and demoralizing.

So do short skirts, but in a different way...

Occasionally I will ask a (female) student if she has a younger sister. If she says yes, I can say "Why don't you give her back her shorts and buy some in your own size?"You know why 'campus' isn't spelled 'club'?

BECAUSE THEY"RE NOT THE SAME F@#$ING THING, SO DON'T DRESS LIKE THEY ARE.To all my good students, thank you. To all my bad one, go get bent.