further adventures in eavesdropping

[kelly_jones]

So yesterday while on public transit I was treated to two first years discussing their workloads. I was listening to music, which is a great way to pretend you're not eavesdropping, just as wearing sunglasses makes it easier to peoplewatch. Anyway, these two so-obviously-in-their-first-semester young ladies went on about how one had a paper due the same day she had an outline due, and how the other one was not particularly encouraged by her writing teacher's comments on how much she had improved over the terms, since she still only had a C+ in the class. Many of us (all of us!) who teach are aware that students' views of their workloads are really kind of hilarious, and that most students believe the gap between the grades they want and the grades they get is the instructor's fault. Clearly instructors should not be so cruel as to assign reading or writing that cannot be completed in ten minutes, and clearly students should all get A's so that they feel good about themselves. Many office hours and much public transit use mean that this was not a new conversation for my eavesdropping ears. But then there was this last bit of greatness, which made it all worthwhile, just before they got off the trolley: one began complaining to the other that she had 9 hours of film to watch this week because her writing instructor had (apparently unfairly) assigned 15 hours' worth of film over the course of the semester and she had been too busy to keep up with it.

Dude. That is rough. You poor thing. How will you ever manage to sit on your ass and watch 4 films all in one week? Like, ohmigod.

Heh heh heh.