Mark Perry of Carpe Diem spotlighted
Dr. Wade's list ; I encourage readers to read the essay, but let me summarize her list for reader convenience:
- Don’t use unprofessional correspondence
- Don’t ask the professor if you “missed anything important” during an absence.
- Don’t pack up your things as the class is ending.
- Don’t ask a question about the readings or assignments until checking the syllabus first.
- Don’t get mad if you receive critical feedback.
- Don’t grade grub.
- Don’t futz with paper formatting.
- Don’t pad your introductions and conclusions with fluff.
- Don’t misrepresent facts as opinions and opinions as facts.
- Don’t be too cool for school.
Personally, I find these annoying behaviors but not necessarily my own pet peeves. I probably might tweak the following list if I thought about them longer, but this is a good start:
- Eliminate "Is this going to be on the test?" from your list of questions. You are responsible for anything I present in class or assign, including the textbook, supplemental readings, and assignments.
- Do not repeat another ask-and-answered question. You would be surprised how many times I've answered the same question just 5 minutes earlier.
- Don't be overly familiar. As long as I'm your instructor, I prefer Dr. or Professor Guillemette. Unless a professor specifies otherwise, do the same for others; do not generalize any exceptions. This is not a Barbara Boxer moment; it's professionalism. In any professional gig or interview I've ever done, the first thing other professionals routinely ask is how I prefer to be addressed. I am not a fellow student or your drinking buddy; I'm your professor/mentor: be respectful.
- Don't be obsequious. It's usually transparent and comes across as desperate and manipulative; in my case, it's counterproductive. For example, what flatters me as a researcher is hearing from a fellow doctoral consortium fellow from Wisconsin-Madison say that he raised my name with a fellow Illinois Institute of Technology professor and asked if he had ever heard of me; that tech communication professor described my articles on technical communication as "classics". On the other hand, when I was on a UWM PhD exam committee, the relevant candidate started out an office visit by telling me how he had read all my articles (as if I would vainly write an exam question over my own work!)
- Don't say 'Professor X doesn't require such-and-such work in his course'. You would think I'm a parent fielding complaints from my teens over "unreasonable" dating/curfew/other family policies... First of all, it's not relevant to my requirements, which reflect my professional judgment. Second, I will not discuss Professor X in an unprofessional manner behind his back; if I have issues with Professor X, I'll address those differences directly and in private.
- Don't ask me to intervene in a disagreement among students. This is particularly true in group projects; I've gotten complaints from students over others not pulling their weight, one student locking out another from their collaborative account, etc. Guess what, folks? Petty behavior often exists in the real workplace; learn to cope, sooner than later.
- Don't make excuses. I don't want to hear how your hard drive crashed just as you were putting final touches on your paper. Most professors are flexible, e.g., with medical problems, weather anomalies, etc. One example: I had a final due date, just before finals, for computer assignments in the fall of my second year at UWM; there was a freak snowstorm on that day. I personally walked to campus in knee-deep snow and fielded calls from students in a panic: I posted a 3-day extension on my office door.
- Follow instructions. Some students seem to have a death wish in defying a teacher's instructions. An actual case in point: I once assigned a 2-page paper, double-spaced, inch margins. One student (no lie) turned in a 5-page, single-spaced, no margin paper. If I don't outright fail the paper, I would probably have the student redo it with a minimum one letter grade penalty.
- Don't procrastinate. In a programming class, I would try to spread say 4 or 5 computing assignments evenly through a semester, each handed out a full 3 weeks or so before the due date. During that 3 week period, I would regularly ask at the beginning or end of lecture if there were any questions about the current assignment. I would estimate maybe 80% would wait until the last 3 days before an exam or assignment due date before starting work and then panic and/or gripe over how "unrealistic" the assignment is.
- Do your own work. Unless you are in a group project, I expect you to turn in your own effort; I personally caught several students at UWM and UTEP who had plagiarized, copy-and-pasting from the familiar unattributed published works of others and/or from each other. In many cases, we often recognize work inconsistent with prior work or exam performance; in other cases, it may be some recurring odd answer, say, for instance, a uniquely misspelled word.
Some Bonus Guidance:
- Don't use me as a reference without my knowledge or consent. In my first semester at UTEP, an MIS senior, who was taking her first class from me, listed me as a reference on her job applications. I later caught her and a fellow student in a clear-cut violation of my published academic honesty policy. She was in a state of panic, worried what I might say to any interested employer and then (under the theory the best defense is a good offense) filed a libelous claim with the gullible, unprofessional Dean of Students Office, irrationally and falsely alleging that I had threatened to blacklist her on the job market (in fact, I've never threatened a student; I had no local and few national recruiter contacts; I don't think in 3 years at UWM any student asked me to serve as a reference). I only knew about this when I got a cold call from the Dean himself, warning me "not to do it". What the hell are you talking about? "You know what you did; don't play innocent!" It was like being in the doghouse without conjugal benefits... He finally admitted the student's smear. I think I ended up getting one relevant employer postcard, which I reported to the Dean's office and sent back a generic response. Now personally I'm not out to get anybody; I also believe in redemption, that one mistake is not fatal. [As I recall, assignments were around 10% of the grade, and I probably dropped the lowest one.] However, the way the student handled it (including throwing tantrums in class (I had simply drawn attention to my published syllabus guidelines and identified no student directly) and in my office) was unacceptable; if I had been her boss in professional IT, she would have been fired for cause. If she had simply calmly discussed her concern with me in private from the get-go, we could have come to an understanding without all the drama. I don't know what happened to her, but karma is a bitch, and the student had a self-destructive personality.
- You're not in high school anymore. I would occasionally get complaints like "I made A's and B's in all my high school classes; I'm not even sure I can pass your course"; "I'm acing all my other courses like history, but I'm spending more time working on your classwork"; "If you were doing your job right, this wouldn't be so hard"; "I learned more in Dr. Guillemette's class than any other class, but he doesn't deserve any credit, because I had to do it all myself". Let me note before continuing, many of these complaints were from students who entered my class before writing their first computer program on their own, and there is a learning curve to any new skill; it never ceases to amaze me that the same students who might spend months training to run a marathon would approach classwork with lesser discipline and higher expectations. In one class, I even had a male student reduced to tears because he saw computer science majors doing my assignment in 30 minutes while he had spent 12 hours without success. It was a blow to his self-esteem that while in high school he was one of the better students, in the more competitive world of college, he was merely average. In college, you no longer have Mommy dragging you out of bed in the morning or badgering you daily about doing your homework. We assume you come to class prepared, that you attend all your classes, do your assigned work and your readings, and know the material; you are competing against equally or more capable students and against higher standards. I learned that in freshman calculus, when I lost full exam credit on a correct proof of a theorem; my professor noted that I could have proved it in 6 vs. 10 steps. I had a philosophy professor who graded every answer on a 4-point scale and applied more stringent grading criteria to more able students like me. The point is, you need to be self-motivated and develop a hard work/study ethic, not just for academic purposes, but for your own subsequent professional career.
