Rebel Girl's Bad Dream

In her dream, Rebel Girl was contacted by the college and informed that a famous theologian would be soon making an appearance. Rebel Girl imagined it would be an event similar to the recent one with Ray Bradbury and that she was being contacted as part of the course. You know, writer comes to campus, contact the English teachers.

But no.

The theologian would be speaking, it seemed, not in the new theater but in the bedroom of Rebel Girl's six-year-old son. The college had contacted her so she could be ready.

Wait a minute, Rebel Girl said.

"What?" the college replied. (In dreams, colleges can talk.)

"You can't do that," she complained. "My son's room has only one chair and besides, it's a mess. I mean, seriously. Littered with Legos since Christmas. It's really not the right venue. And parking in the canyon is terrible."

The college was adamant.

Another professor weighed in. "You can't hold the talk there," she pointed out in an email to the college president. "It's not even on campus. It's in the canyon."

The college refused to change its mind.

Rebel Girl, not knowing what else to do, started cleaning up her son's bedroom and prepared for the hordes to arrive.

The speaker arrived first.

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

And then, thankfully, Rebel Girl woke up.

“I deserve a A”

From the New York Times:

Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes

… “Many students come in with the conviction that they’ve worked hard and deserve a higher mark,” Professor [Marshall] Grossman [of U of Maryland] said. “Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before.”

He attributes those complaints to his students’ sense of entitlement.

“I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C,” he said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.”

A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.

“I noticed an increased sense of entitlement in my students and wanted to discover what was causing it” said Ellen Greenberger, the lead author of the study, called “Self-Entitled College Students: Contributions of Personality, Parenting, and Motivational Factors,” which appeared last year in The Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
…
James Hogge, associate dean of the Peabody School of Education at Vanderbilt University, said: “Students often confuse the level of effort with the quality of work. There is a mentality in students that ‘if I work hard, I deserve a high grade.’ “

In line with Dean Hogge’s observation are Professor Greenberger’s test results. Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed said that if they explained to a professor that they were trying hard, that should be taken into account in their grade.

Jason Greenwood, a senior kinesiology major at the University of Maryland echoed that view.

“I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade,” Mr. Greenwood said. “What else is there really than the effort that you put in?”

“If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point?” he added. “If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher’s mind, then something is wrong.”

Sarah Kinn, a junior English major at the University of Vermont, agreed, saying, “I feel that if I do all of the readings and attend class regularly that I should be able to achieve a grade of at least a B.”….

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "sleeping in the cold"

Rebel Girl's middle-aged winters in Southern California are sure different than those of her girlhood in Los Angeles. Then she saw the snow from an impossible distance - these days it is her seasonal friend. Some photos from the long weekend. Forsee Creek was fringed each morning with lacy ice.


After a good snowfall, Rebel Girl and her little guy get up early and follow the tracks the animals have left behind. It's a bit of detective work that finds them crawling under trees and bushes and trailing the river as they trace their steps and try to identify them.



And now, a poem:

Winter Trees
by William Carlos Williams


All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.



(Above, the Santa Ana River.)