In Defense of Unicorn Girl

After reading some of the responses to my original post on Unicorn Girl, I did a wee bit of undergrad-style research (that is, I typed my topic into google). I found that there is, in reality, a cave painting that is referred to as a unicorn--even though in the photo that I saw of it, it clearly has two horns. There is also an extinct species of rhinoceros that has "Unicorn" in its Latin name; it apparently had a single horn (although the horn is not preserved in the fossil record), and it's believed that myths about unicorns may be based on this animal. Finally, there was a scientist in the 1700's who believed that he had found physical evidence of extinct unicorns. So the student in question is still seriously confused, but not quite as badly as I thought she was. I can see how she found much-diluted and corrupted accounts of these facts, perhaps on some sort of message board for people who believe that unicorns are real, and conflated them into recent scientific evidence of real unicorns. It's possible she is not crazy, just not very good at telling reliable sources from unreliable ones.

On the other hand, apparently the draft she brought to peer review was about different kinds of magic and how dragons only speak mind-to-mind with people who are pure of heart. Her classmates apparently convinced her to dial down the crazy a bit. I remain slightly boggled by the idea of a college student who things unicorns and telepathic dragons are an appropriate paper topic, but I'm guardedly optimistic that she's not completely off her rocker.

In other news, I have a student in the Lit. class who, upon having her single response paper (she should have written two by now) returned with a low grade for being late, and a comment that she was one response paper behind, told me that she had, in fact, done the first one. You see, she left it on her desk in the classroom when the class ended. She assumed I had it, even though when I returned her classmates' work, she didn't get it back. Is there anyone in the world who thinks that leaving work on a student desk in the classroom constitutes "turning in" said work? Is she really that dumb, or does she just think I am? She produced a "second copy" of the paper, which I didn't accept because my firm policy is that response papers have to be turned in on the day we discuss the text that it's responding to--the whole point of them is to ensure that students show up to class with things to say about the reading assignment, so if students go home and write them after the discussion, their purpose isn't being served. The student just said, "Oh, okay," and left, but I forsee further difficulties once she's had a chance to come up with what she thinks is a compelling counterargument. I mean, she did have it on the day! It's not her fault I didn't inspect every random piece of paper left in my classroom, on the off chance that it might be somebody's homework!

I plan to stand firm--they're supposed to do seven response papers; missing one is not going to torpedo her grade, as long as she writes the rest of them on time.

So I have this student...

in remedial writing at BCCC. And she's apparently a total whackaloon. One of the (textbook) prompts for the first assignment is "Something that really interests me."

Her paragraph is about whether fairy-tale dragons exist in the real world. She believes that they might, because in an art class she heard that unicorns were real at one time, before humans or climate change killed them. In conclusion, she continues to hope that fairy-tale dragons exist in the real world.

The paragraph is structured fairly well, with a topic sentence and everything, although riddled with grammatical and syntactical errors. But don't be distracted by that. The crucial issue is that here is a grown-ass woman, a high school graduate, who thinks that it's appropriate to write a college paper about how dragons might be real. And her evidence for thinking this is that unicorns are real.

This person can vote. I'm frightened.

PS: And her course evaluation at the end of term will count the same as that of a sane person.

PPS: This post originally contained the full text of the student's paragraph, but I removed it when I started to worry about the student someday finding this blog and knowing I was making fun of her. This way, even if she does see it, she can't be totally sure that it's not about someone else with the same weird interest.

Grade Complaints Ahoy

I haven't posted anything new here all week, but I do have a thing up on RateYourStudents--if you're not familliar, click the link on the right side of your screen. September 5. It's my third RYS item.

I've gotten a grade complaint from one of my summer classes. The student hasn't actually spoken to me about it: she wrote to me asking how she "could do better" in the next class. I told her, and pointed out that since she hadn't passed mine, she wouldn't be taking the next class in the sequence until she took the other class again. She replied by asking to come in and meet with me on a day that the campus wasn't even open, and for copies of her final exam and final assignment. I left the work with the secretary for her to pick up; a week later, the secretary decided she probably wasn't coming in for it, and gave it back to me. Naturally, the next day, Student came in for the stuff. Secretary (a wonderful person, BTW, without whom the college would not function) told me; I left the work with her again. When the student finally came in for it she met with Dean of Students and claimed I had made a mistake in her grade (not true) and then said she would bring in a doctor's note to prove that her two-weeks-late paper should have been excused.

And that's where it stands now. I informed Dean of Students that I would change Student's grade if she (DoS) told me to, as it was not a hill I was willing to die on. This is actually a good strategy (I think) with DoS, because, while I could tell she wanted me to change it, she knows better than to try to make a teacher change a grade--if the other faculty found out about it, she'd have a serious staff-relations problem on her hands. So now we're waiting to find out if Student ever actually brings in the Doctor's note.

My argument against changing the grade is, A, the student is not ready for the next class anyway. Sometimes students can squeak a pass even though they aren't actually prepared, and if she had passed, she'd have been one of those. In this case the numbers, as they often do, jibe with my holistic evaluation of her performance. If she did seem prepared for the next class, I'd be more willing to hear about juggling the numbers. And B, introducing new evidence to change grades at this late a date--almost a month after the end of the semester in question--is not a precedent I want to set. What do others think about this second point? Does anyone accept excuse notes after final grades are in?