Things students do that aren't annoying

Female Science Professor's blog recently featured a discussion of annoying things students do, like asking "Did I miss anything important" or "Is that going to be on the test" (the two questions FSP's readers voted the most annoying.) The purpose of the FSP posts is, in part, to generate good practical advice for students, and they do. For example, when in doubt, start an email to a professor with "Dear Professor X..."  When sending a file to a professor, use a title like "MyName_resume.doc" rather than "resume.doc".

Yet when I talk to students, it seems that some are so afraid of annoying their professors that they do not ask for - and thus do not receive - the support and assistance they need, deserve and pay for. So I've put together my own personal list of things that don't annoy me - or don't annoy me much. If you're a prof, before you read this, please take this one-question quiz and tell me some things that you don't find annoying. If you're a student, please talk about some of the things that you don't do, because you're worried about annoying your professor, in the comments. 

Click here to take the one-question "What's not annoying?" survey 

Things students do that don't annoy me

1. Coming to office hours. It's office hours. I've come to my office expressly for the purpose of meeting students. Helping students understand the course material is what makes holding office hours worthwhile.

2. Confessing ignorance. When a student walks into my office, my first assumption is "most likely this is an average student." Most people, however, think of themselves as somewhat above the average. (This is a well-documented psychological tendency that goes by various names, including overconfidence bias, illusory superiority, and the Dunning-Kruger effect.) It's embarrassing, if you think you're an above average student, to confess that LM curves, indifference curves, or Ricardian equivalence leave you absolutely baffled. There's no need to feel shame. I've seen it all before. Feeling confused is completely normal.

Warning: No effort = no sympathy. Come to class, read the textbook, then ask for help.

3. Sending emails late at night or on weekends. I usually answer email on weekends, but some other profs don't. It never hurts to send an email - the worst a prof will do is ignore it.

4. Asking for letters of reference (if a B+ or better student). Writing reference letters is part of a professor's job. It's helpful when students provide a folder with a list of the references they need, a transcript, a CV, and a couple of old exams/assignments/essays. The reason I say "B+ or better" is that a B+ average is usually the minimum criterion for graduate school admission, and I really do not like writing negative or equivocal letters for students.

5. Disagreeing with me. Some might say that I give higher marks to students who share my views. I don't think I do - at least I try not to. Generally I would much rather engage with an intelligent student who disagrees with me than read an assignment consisting of quotations from the textbook and lecture notes.

6. Crying in my office. It happens. That's why there's a box of kleenex on the desk. Just don't expect that crying will persuade me to change grades/forgive academic integrity offenses/grant deferrals.

 7. Making spelling and grammar mistakes (especially if a non-native English speaker). This is probably the most controversial item on the "not annoying" list, and there are definitely days when I get seriously irritated by bad spelling and grammar. But, overall, structure is more important than spelling. What matters is that the paper/exam presents a logical argument, with each idea in its own paragraph, and that there is an introduction and a conclusion. Use a spelling and grammar check, read your work out loud (this does help), and take note of any corrections that I make on draft copies of the work. Trying matters. Putting in an effort matters. Improvement matters. Perfection doesn't matter. Everyone makes mistakes.

 8. Being unable to read my handwriting. This is a very common problem. Lots of students really struggle to read handwriting, especially ones who grew up in countries where the Roman alphabet is not used. I'm pretty good at reading students' handwriting, but even I struggle when it comes to reading my own script. Bring the essay/exam to my office during office hours and ask for a translation.

9. Asking to review their final exam. This used to annoy me, until once a student found a massive addition error that the TA had made, that I'd not spotted, and the student's grade changed several letter grades. Now I'll happily let students look over their final exam. Arguing or begging for a change of grade is another story entirely.

This is my own personal list of things that do not annoy me. They may annoy other professors, however, so it's wise to be careful. I would have liked to have made this a top 10 list, but I couldn't think of any more things students do that don't annoy me.

By the way, here are some alternatives to asking the ultra-annoying "Is this going to be on the final exam?" question: "Do you have any suggestions about how I should study for the final?" "Is the emphasis going to be on material before or after the midterm exam?" "Can you give me any information about the format of the final?" (Multiple choice exams tend to cover lots of material in not that much depth, and it's important to know definitions as they're easy to examine. Short-answer or long-answer exams tend to cover less material in much greater depth.). Old exams are invaluable -  if it's possible to obtain them. Another strategy is to come to the professor's office hours with several questions. If something's not on the final, the prof is unlikely to want to spend half an hour explaining it. 

Comments

[Jack P.]

Here is some good advice for economics students, related to the subject of this post I think:

http://marcfbellemare.com/wordpress/2012/08/how-can-i-do-well-in-my-econ-course/

http://marcfbellemare.com/wordpress/2012/01/how-to-maximize-the-likelihood-that-you-will-do-well-in-your-economics-class/

[Thomas Lumley]

Two more things that students might think I'd be annoyed by, but I'm not.

* Point out mistakes in my lecture notes

* More subtly, point out problems in the background of my data analysis examples.

This was more an issue teaching introductory biostatistics to a wide range of health sciences graduate students. My examples were real data (tidied up and simplified in many cases) and were supposed to be real questions (again, tidied up and simplified), and I want to know if the background to the questions is obsolete or just plain wrong.

[Frances Woolley]

Jack P, Thomas, thanks, those are great suggestions.

[Colin Percival]

How about pointing out mistakes in lectures? This may be less of an issue in Economics, but as an undergraduate student in mathematics I regularly caught professors making arithmetic or algebraic mistakes -- I started yelling corrections from the back of the room after one absent-minded professor got lost for 15 minutes and ended a lecture with "well umm this worked when I did it yesterday", but I've heard many students say they would be terrified to suggest that a professor did something wrong.

[Frances Woolley]

Colin, I've added that to the quiz. There were 9 responses to the quiz when I added that option, so the answers to that option will have to be scaled up.

The time when I appreciate this the most is when I make a a calculation mistake right at the beginning of working out a long problem, and some one points it out immediately. For that, I am truly thankful.

I wouldn't say pointing out mistakes is never annoying - it can be done in a disrespectful way, sometimes the mistake isn't important and the interruption is distracting and time consuming, and sometimes the prof hasn't actually made a mistake, it's the student who's confused. But when I'm standing on the blackboard trying to figure out why I'm not getting the answer I should get, I really appreciate the student who points odd mistakes in lecture.

[Jacques René Giguère]

Frances: in the last exam in a very basic introductory course this winter, I asked multiple choices questions . One of them required to compute various elasticities but the students had to notice the variation in income as well as prices in the data set. The distractors were various combinations of mistakes in using wrong data within the set. You can go a long way with multiple choices if the exam is well structured.

[Giovanni]

How about the student who says "That's not the way people really are" in the middle of a lecture on, say, consumer theory? (I did this once as an undergraduate...as I recall, it got me a stern look, a five-minute spiel on Friedman's "Methodology of Positive Economics" and the admonition I'd need to be more open-minded if I was going to suceed as an economics student.)

[Colin Percival]

Frances: Indeed, I was referring to errors which are obvious as soon as you notice them (you copied that equation wrong when you switched to a new blackboard, you said that 2 + 4 = 8, etc.) during calculations. Certainly it would be annoying if the student wasn't first absolutely certain that it was a mistake, or if it's something irrelevant rather than something which will cause problems later in the calculation.

On your point 3 (emails late at night / on weekends), I'd add the caveat "as long as it's not the night before an exam", since that sort of timing places an unreasonable pressure on the instructor to respond quickly. I had profs announce that they wouldn't be checking their email for 24 hours prior to the final exam in order to prevent this.

[Alice Woolley]

You and I are the same person (surprise!). The only exception for me is that I am OK with spelling and grammar errors in handwritten exams but not in essays. And students who misspell my name in an e-mail asking for assistance are very annoying.

I actually don't mind when students ask whether something is on the exam, or how to prepare for the exam or anything like that. In some of my classes I cover a huge amount of material and it seems reasonable to know whether it is something they will be tested on or not.

[edeast]

I had a really awkward experience in math class, where I let a professor error accumulate, before saying something cause we weren't getting along so well and I was trying not to be a dick. Hoping someone else would catch it. Anyway, it sucked. Later another student pointed out a mistake right away, and the prof mentioned how he appreciated it.

[Frances Woolley]

Giovanni "How about the student who says "That's not the way people really are" in the middle of a lecture on, say, consumer theory?"

Sometimes a good test is "how are other students likely to feel about this intervention?" Since the majority of students just want the prof to get through the material and get on with it, questions that probe the deep philosophical underpinnings of econ are better left for office hours. If someone said that in one of my classes I hope I'd say something like "yes and no. There's a large literature on behavioural econ that addresses these issues - if you stay after class I'll give you some references."

Alice, yes, there is a big difference between spelling on exams and spelling on essays. We both know someone who couldn't spell to save her life, and I think that probably makes us more forgiving and understanding than some other people would be.

[Frances Woolley]

On the survey a number of people have made other comments/suggested other things that aren't annoying

Send me information (e.g. news stories or references) on issues that they know interest me (suggested by two people)

Do other stuff in class, as long as it's not disruptive.

Manipulative crying is annoying, but crying while explaining poor performance due to personal problems is not

Ask pertinent questions in class (not trying to work less or get a better grade) (suggested by two people)

Caveat on late night emails: They are annoying when students expect immediate replies.

Ask what parts of the prerequisite courses they should brush up on (note: this has never actually happened, but it'd be nice if it did once)

[Giovanni]

"If someone said that in one of my classes I hope I'd say something like 'yes and no. There's a large literature on behavioural econ that addresses these issues - if you stay after class I'll give you some references'."

I think this would be very reasonable response. (But also an unusual one - I suspect even today most instructors would react in much the same way my old prof did.) But what if the student pressed the issue? "Yes and no? Now I'm confused. Are you saying this is basically the right way to think about how people behave, with maybe some small adjustments you'll talk about later. Or that it isn't really true, but for some reason you're teaching it to to us anyways, as if it is true?"

(As you can probably tell, I'd have a good deal of sympathy for any student who raised questions of this sort. During my time teaching I was constantly amazed - and bothered - by the degree of mental acquiescence displayed by students. I used to tell my wife: "If I said 'I am a horse' in class, they'd all dutifully scribble down 'prof is a horse'...and the keeners would bring me a sack of oats at the end of the course.")

[K]

Giovanni,

Yup. Reminds me of this old Doonesbury cartoon.

[Frances Woolley]

Giovanni - context is everything. Big class v. small class? Are the other students interested in the answer, or could they not care less? Is the question picking up on something that a lot of students are wondering, or lost and confused about? Is it half way through a three hour class, when everybody's feeling a bit bored and needs a break?

I once had a brilliant student who would ask great questions. I would have loved to have spent the entire three hour class talking to him about whether or not voluntary provision of public goods could provide the efficient level of outdoor hockey rinks. But it went right over all of the other students' heads, so I had to cut the questions off.

[Alice Woolley]

Giovanni - a laugh out loud of recognition and amusement.

[steve]

A simple I dont know never annoys me. Making up stuff annoys me. Not getting something right or understanding something the first time does not annoy me. Arguing with me about why they are getting it wrong annoys me. (I teach med students and residents.)

Steve

[J.V. Dubois]

Reading Giovanni's comment I thought about this simple story

"Student says "That's not the way people really are"? And now prof goes into five-minute spiel on Friedman's "Methodology of Positive Economics" and the admonition I'd need to be more open-minded only to be interrupted by another student - "Mr. Professor, will Methodology of Positive Economics also be part of the test?"

So yeah, question about something being on the test may be sign of an annoying student. But the question may also be a sign of a "bad teaching" because instead of explaining to students things that will later be required from them you were engaged in lively dialogue actually teaching students something that is unfortunately not necessarily directly connected to what "will be part of the test". So yes, the question was maybe annoying but it is more in line of how university education actually works than what some teachers like to think about themselves and the system they are part of.

[Frances Woolley]

J.V. "the question may also be a sign of a "bad teaching" "

Spot on.

[Chris J]

Nothing a student does that is a genuine attempt to understand will bother me. Almost anything that is an attempt to score points (metaphorically or on a test) will annoy me.

The catch is there can be cultural/educational history issues confusing the two calsses. I gave a grad class a substantial numerical calculation. One student kept asking me about it and I started getting impatient. I think he sensed my annoyance because he pointed out this was the first time he had been given such an assignment.

What is annoying is the struggling student who doesn't ask for help or students who don't help each other

[Tyler V. Johnson]

It doesn't annoy me if students come in with a draft of a paper to get my thoughts. That shows effort. It doesn't annoy me if someone asks how they can do better in the class and follows up the request with action and effort. It does annoy me if they say, "I really need to pass this class! What can I do?" one or two weeks before the final. I usually think to myself, "well, asking for help about three months ago would have been a good idea." By the way, I teach history.

[Frances Woolley]

Tyler "It does annoy me if they say, "I really need to pass this class! What can I do?" one or two weeks before the final."

Though this is somewhat less annoying than saying "I really need to pass this class! What can I do" after the final!