Gracie’s Life Experiment

It’s funny how fast after graduation you find yourself saying “bloody students”.  Worked out today that this is my 5th year of supervising undergraduate final year projects.   So this week’s 10 things are 10 things that cause student rage (against students) to occur:

1. Random jaywalking/cycling. Why when there is plenty of pavement do they walk down the road? Why do they cycle against the traffic?
2. They think they are psychic and can guess what you you are going to mark them on. Why don’t they just ask?
3. They suddenly resurface when there is some deliverable due in
4. They cancel meetings because they are too hungover
5. They insist on a weekly meeting but don’t do anything between meetings
6. As soon as you mention “coursework” or “exam” they actually start listening
7. You give them guidelines for what things they should cover, then they just give you something different
8. They play lecturers off each other (Prof X wants his coursework that week, can’t we have yours 2 weeks later). Do they think real life demands are going to spread themselves out nicely for them
9. They forget any knowledge that they’ve learnt more than 2 months previously
10. They don’t seem to understand that sometimes we are trying to assess what they’ve learnt not necessarily what they’ve crammed in their heads from a textbook!

Embarrassingly I think when I was a student I probably fell into most of those categories (apart from maybe walking in the road for fun). Of course, technically I am still a student (albeit a part time one).

Summary of the day: Work, Analysed lots of models in the morning, Marked students’ project demonstrations ALL afternoon, Relaxed