Cell Phones

I knew it would happen soon enough.  Children these days cannot go five minutes without checking their phones.  I am willing to turn a blind eye to it, because the frequent users are often so amusingly perplexed when they see their terrible grades.

But when someone not only allows their phone to make noise in class, but answers it?  Intolerable.  This happened today, and the student seemed to think that because he was at the back of the room, he could carry on a conversation.

I stopped talking, took my attendance book in hand, and walked up to the back of the room and stood over him.  Being the type of self-centered maggot that he is, he didn't stop talking immediately.  When he finally hung up the phone, he looked up at me and said, "Sorry.  I had to take that call."

"Really?  Deciding on your lunch plans was more important than this class?  I hope it's a good lunch, because you have just failed.  Tell me your name so I can put it on the record."

He flinched at first, but then seemed to regain his arrogance.  "How can you fail me?  You don't even know who I am?"

I sighed, though inwardly I smiled.  I had hoped he would say that.  "Very well then."  I looked at the attendance sheet in front of me, and picked a male-sounding name at random.  Well, maybe not entirely random.  The boy in front of me was Caucasian, so I intentionally chose a name that wasn't.  "Eduardo Valverde.  You now fail this class."

A Hispanic boy across the room immediately jumped up from his chair and said, "You can't do that!  That's not fair!"  The whole class seemed shocked, but the rude boy in front of me seemed almost as shocked as Eduardo.

"I will not tolerate rude behavior in my classroom, and someone must be punished for it.  Since I do not know this person's name, then it falls to you.  You can either fail the class, or find out this gentleman's name."

"You can't do this," said Eduardo.  He took a few steps toward me and the rude boy.  I did not pay him much mind, but the boy seemed to be getting nervous.  While Eduardo wasn't huge, he did seem to be more muscular than the scrawny white boy now sinking into his desk.

"I can and I will.  You are of course welcome to drop the class, there is still time before the deadline."

"But I need this class," said Eduardo, more to the rude boy than to me.

"So do I," the boy said, though with a small voice.

"Look, you were the asshole talking on your phone during class.  You should drop and take it again next semester."

"But I'm in mechanical engineering.  It will throw off my whole schedule!"

Eduardo leaned over the desk.  "If your schedule is that important, maybe you should have been more focused in class."

The boy shrank further.  I saw his eyes shimmer, and I knew it was a good day.  "My name is Dave Hewitt."

"Dave Hewitt," I repeated out loud, as much to confirm it on my role as to see if he had by some chance try to be clever and give someone else's name.  "You may have failed this class, and most likely your life in general, but you have enriched everyone else's education as a result.  Thank you, and goodbye."

He sniffled as he gathered his books as quickly as he could, and ran out the classroom.  I may have heard his cell phone ring again.  I didn't bother to look at Eduardo as he went to sit back down.  I walked straight to the front of the room and finished my lecture on limits and continuity.

The First Day of Classes

Ah, the first day of classes.  Let's run through the standard litany of student garbage.  I pass out syllabi with all the relevant information they could need about class policy, and of course they pointless questions begin.

Someone asked about tests, and whether or not there will be review sessions for them.  I respond of course there is review for the tests.  Every day in lecture is a review for the test.  Every homework problem is review for the test.  Would they like me to assign more review work?

Someone else asked about how the homework is graded.  Thoroughly.

Someone said one of their other teachers actually gave out their cell phone number so students could call or text whenever they had problems.  I just laughed.

Someone complained about the price of textbooks.  I simply nodded, and remembered the fun I had over the summer trying to find the most expensive books.   The shrink-wrapped extras were a delightful bonus that would keep them from ever being able to sell it back.  You've got to enjoy the little things.

During this whole discussion, a group of about half a dozen students at the back of the lecture hall chattered away.  I couldn't entirely blame them.  The questions were the height of pointlessness.  But among them, I think I recognized that girl who was in my office last week, asking for special permission.  Of course.  She needs special help getting into the class, then can't be bothered with the common courtesy of keeping quiet while the professor is talking.  It took me a bit to recognize her, because her normal hair had been dyed a bright shade of blue.  Yes, I know this type.  Desperate to stand out, to be her own person apart from her parents, but will endlessly lean on her friends and teachers to go above and beyond to bail her out of every little bit of trouble.  I anticipate her getting sick...or maybe having a grandparent die, right around the time of the first test.

I hope so.  She will get her own very special exam.  And an education in how fair the real world can be.  Fair, because she won't be getting everything handed to her anymore.

But that will come in its own time.  Now, on to functions and a review of basic algebra every child should know.

An Early Start

Today, a girl came into my office.  She wanted me to sign a prerequisite waiver form to get into calculus.  With no prompting whatsoever, she launched into some long, drawn-out story about some problems with her placement score.  The network having issues, the school losing it, or not needing it because of her SAT scores.  I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention to her blathering.  I've heard it all so many times.  Nothing she said could ever matter.

I was about to tell her that she was in the wrong office.  Her placement issues are not my problem.  She should go to the registrar and leave me alone.  I could then drink up her defeat, and if lucky I could relish a tear or two.  But no, I had to remind myself, I'm taking a different path this semester.  Enjoying the long pain.  Students who require special permission early on are much more likely to crash and burn dramatically.  And this one had great potential to fail colossally.

So, I smiled and told her I would be happy to let her in my class.  Perhaps I smiled a little too much.  She seemed to back away slightly before forcing herself to reach over and take the signed form from me.  Ah, trying to put on a brave face.  I look forward to watching her cry later in the semester.  She would learn her place in the world, and it was far from intellectual pursuits.

They Will Get What They Deserve

Despite my best efforts, here we are barely a week before the semester starts, and I'm going to be teaching first semester calculus.  First semester calculus!  Babysitting a room full of idiots who are practically surgically connected to their phones.  Those sad, vacant stares alternating between confusion and fear.

It was Sherman who threw me under the bus.  All of us in the department who know The Path shared in the responsibility, but they let the blame fall on my shoulders.  He told me we all would have to participate in active recruitment at the lowest levels to make up for the losses this last year.  The others took things like discrete structures, linear algebra. All classes that, while beneath us, at least would have a decent number of math majors, increasing the chances of having a student with an affinity for The Path.  He said someone had to cover one of the calculus sections, "to cast a wide net."  Hah!  You don't cast a wider net in a sewer hoping to catch a dolphin.

No, I know it will be a lecture hall full of people who struggle to tie their shoelaces in the morning.  And I railed against Sherman all summer trying to convince him that he was wasting my time with this.  He finally told me to drop it or he'd find a way to make my other class remedial algebra.  I shudder to think what that would be like.

But then I came around.  Maybe I was approaching this the wrong way.  Why should I be frustrated that I couldn't teach snakes to tap dance?  If I was going to have to face a room full of soulless, dead-eyed husks, perhaps I could coax a bit of life out of them.  Not by teaching them.  Ha!  No, that's not possible.  The best way to get them to perk up, pay attention, and have some light in their eyes is to give them the spark of fear.  Fear that their college careers will be over before its barely begin.  Fear that if they wanted to survive this class, they'd have to dedicate their lives to it, and even then they may not succeed.

And when they saw that all the other sections of this class were quite full, and there was no hope at all, I would be there when their dreams were crushed.

And what if I'm wrong?  What if there is someone in there that is worthy of learning The Path?  I will know.  I will see their shining beacon stand up tall as the others fall.  And when he stands over the bodies of his fallen classmates, I will show him the doorway to the answers to mysteries he never could have imagined.

Maybe it will be a good semester after all.