Saturday, January 23, 2010

The Brightest Spark

In life as a lecturer I have come across many varieties of students. Needless to say some are bright..while others..lets just say..the lights are on but no one's home...not sharp, to say the least.

As a fair person with an overly developed sense of fairness and duty I try my best with the second category..encouraging, cajoling, threatening and sometimes also scaring them into trying harder. But it does not always work!

So at the start of last term, I was approached by a very quiet first year who asked me which lecture she must attend. As she is one of my students I told her it would be the Textiles lecture at 12 in the Main Room. She then proceeded to attend the Graphics lecture from 10-12 and then my lecture from 12-2 and then moaned that its too hard. I had to explain quite calmly that she only needs to attend her own class and does not have to sit through some other lesson. (To be noted - each class has over 200 students and so it is hard to notice new faces and figure out for lecturers who do not belong in the session).

It was the start of term, she was new, a little lost and perhaps would figure it out eventually I thought. But nope...she did attend all the lectures all of sept-dec from 10-2pm. She came back this term and told me she cant handle this..and I asked her, without trying to sound condescending..if she is sure that she is attending only my class..and when I heard the answer I gave up. I dont know what she cant get...
- no one in that room is from her class..eg friends etc
- no one in that lesson speaks about textiles...ever
- no attendance sheets in that lesson have her name
- no one else complains of attending 4 hour lectures.

Thus I am pushed into making a few guesses:
A - She likes the Graphics lectures
B - She loves the Graphics Lecturers
C - She sleeps in both sessions
D - She wants to learn more than what she signed up for
E - She is not very smart, and perhaps shall never be.


Oh yes, she is incredibly sweet and nice and polite..but apparently E is the best guess..she is NOT the brightest spark!

1 comment:

ani_aset said...

LOL morpheus, sometimes you just gotta give it up :)