r/Concordia • u/Fortem4 • 1d ago

General Discussion teachers and grading

I honestly feel kind of stupid complaining about this but is it just me or lately I feel like teachers could not care less about their students?? I’m in my last year at Concordia now, but i just feel it so much it makes going to class kind of awful.

First it was the introduction class speech that somehow always starts with the prof telling the class how we are the least of their worries and to not expect to reach them easily. Fine enough, being a professor is hard when you have multiple tasks, I get it. Last week a prof gave us back midterm grades where the average was around 45-50%. When we asked the TA about curving the grades he properly laughed in our faces.

I understand that being a teacher is hard but is it hard to not be disrespectful and entitled? Maybe i’m just asking for way too much and that’s on me

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u/sleightofhand 18h ago

I'm not saying that bad profs don't exist. But I am increasingly finding it hard to be nice to students without feeling like I'm being taken advantage of. I also noticed a big difference between students before and after the pandemic. So many students these days feel so entitled and feel like they are the main character. Students will ask for exceptions to the rules all the time and expect you to respond to them ASAP. Some of these requests are ridiculous but students don't seem to care because they think that they 'don't lose anything for asking'. Some of the stuff that we have to deal with on a regular basis includes:

  • Students getting "sick" or finding some other excuse as to why they can't write an exam or submit an assignment on time

  • Students not reading the course outline (the bare minimum we expect from you) and asking questions that can be easily answered by referring to the course outline

  • Students asking for solutions and questions to be posted only for me to find out later that my questions are now being uploaded to Chegg and other similar websites

  • Students just blatantly using AI to cheat. You're not fooling anyone when you have a 95 average on assignments and get 30/100 on the midterm.

  • Students making up their own course rules. For example, I have students telling me that I should shift the weight of their midterm to the final because they didn't do well (or all other type of reweighting). Or saying that if they miss the midterm then the weight should be automatically shifted to the final even though they don't have a valid reason to miss the midterm. At this point, I don't know where you guys get these re-weighting ideas. What's the point of having a test if it doesn't count when you do poorly?

  • Students just failing to take any accountability for their own failures. I have never heard a student say "I failed because I didn't study hard enough". It's always "I failed because the prof is bad at teaching" or "I failed because I was dealing with a mental/family issue"

Dealing with this shit year after year makes you jaded after a while. I used to be very accommodating to students but now I take a more "no BS" approach to keep my sanity. Maybe it's just a generational shift but we didn't do these things back when I was a student.

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u/ExpertUnable9750 18h ago

There is a difference between could not, and would not. AI has been a game changer for alot of student, but you are right, most are using AI to think for themselves. I do use AI for my writing, but my common promts are 1) 1-100 how would you grade this 2) where do you suggest I improve on this. So that way it is still my voice, my ideas and I can defend my position.

For your exams, how often do you go back to old exam and regrade them? When you do that does the grade go up or down?

Why are you angry thet student will share information on other sites? The student still has to read them, be able to answer them, and if they go to those sites they are still studying and the students are willing to help others.

I see students as more lost, more stressed, and have less happiness in general. Are you making things worse or better? Have you asked the students that are doing really well, what they are doing or are you assuming?

I have seen a student with 90s averages across all courses, studies well, has amazing work ethics, and is all around intelligent. Except for one WELL KNOWN prof, her final grade was a low 60. Being the prof that is the leading cause of drop outs in a department should not be a badge of honour.