The timing was perfect: I finished marking the final exam scripts – finally – and uploaded the results into the system on Monday morning, looking forward to cool my head down a bit with some light browsing only to find the university internet connection was down.
PFFT!
I failed quite a handful of students this time. Now, that last sentence can be read in different ways, huh? But I’ll leave it at that. Every time students screw up you just can’t help thinking that somehow it has something to do with you. Maybe I am not a very good instructor, yet, but at the same time I strongly feel that our students are too pampered for their own good.
One thing that really drove me nuts was the English. While I definitely don’t expect perfect grammar, which I don’t have myself, the level of English is appalling, especially considering that we are an English (and Arabic) language-based institution, and the average Malaysian student is supposed to have at least twelve years of English in school and matriculation. Instead of variables increasing or decreasing, I was reading “demand will up”. Half of the time I had such a difficult time trying to understand what was being written – the handwriting didn’t help – that I wanted to just tear the answer books into tiny little pieces and burn them.
The ‘bullet-point generation’, that’s what I’m calling the students we have now. They can’t be bothered to read textbooks, which they find confusing and suffocating, depending instead on bullet-point notes. Since they didn’t read the textbooks in the first place, most of the students didn’t even prepare their own notes. Frighteningly, many are relying solely on PowerPoint handouts, wherever they get them from – all facts but no context.
On the lighter side, chances are students will avoid taking my classes in the coming semester. Fewer students mean fewer scripts to mark, YAY! Bad news for the HS/RK students though, as I’ll still be the only instructor for ECON1500.
:-P
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