Now That I'm Teaching Again...

...I can look forward to more student complaints when they don't get "A" grades, as if it's somehow my fault.

A complaint like this, though, is extraordinary: the student complains that the professor fails to give sufficient direction, but also that he was too critical of the student's writing; the professor failed to tell his students what was being asked of them, yet he also taught students how to read things in too much detail. He claims to be a good writer, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary. (He's a generally competent writer, but one who does not understand that repetition does not equal quality.) And to make it that much worse, the professor's obvious efforts to be objective and respectful of differing points of view nevertheless caused the student to be offended and uncomfortable, so very uncomfortable that the student never once spoke up in class about his thoughts or even took time to visit the professor in his office hours.

My guess is that the student was disappointed in his grade, and chose to blame the professor rather than himself. There doesn't seem to be any specific thing that the professor did wrong that I can discern from the lengthy complaint. It's a lengthy, passive-aggressive beg for a higher grade.

This sort of thing is why I've abandoned asking my students to write much of anything when I teach. Objective testing has its drawbacks, to be sure, but at the end of the day the objective test answer is either right or it's wrong. Students complain that they were confused and they blame the way the question is written for why they got the question wrong. But it's so much easier for me to hide behind the textbook -- this is the question in the textbook, this is the answer in the textbook, this is where you could have found the answer in the textbook, and I let you take the test with your textbook right in front of you. It's not my fault if you don't know what's in the textbook.