Check Engine

I'll admit it: I like control. Not control over others, or even myself, but control over my environment. I like things to be smooth and orderly or I like to remove myself from the situation. It should be no surprise, then, that driving home for the holidays is almost always hell.

Last night as I was packing, I checked my email and learned that a student I reluctantly failed in one of my classes has filed an appeal. This was a kid that I bent over backwards to help all semester, but she ultimately failed to cut the mustard. Immediately, of course, I thought about my reputation and wondered what kinds of accusations she was making: was I a terrible teacher, a heartless human being? I wrote a series of frenzied responses to the dean in an effort to clear myself.

This morning, not ten minutes into the trip, the check engine light came on in our 2002 Toyota Highlander. This baffling little light can mean almost anything on a continuum starting with "your coolant tank cap is loose" and ending with "your engine is on fire." After the usual popping of the hood and surveying of the bared engine with an air of doomed melancholy, searching, I suppose, for a helpful little sign pointing to a part and saying "your problem is here," I decided to keep driving.

Later, I paced around a rest stop talking to the dean on my cell phone about the grade appeal.

When we got to my in-laws' house tonight, there was an email from another student I failed, accusing me of ruining her life and forcing her into community college and a career of thankless servitude at Taco Bell. After auditioning a series of acerbic responses, I decided to take the high road and simply deleted the email.

Not a good day. In one fell swoop, my fairness is questioned, my sense of control challenged, and my good heart and fine intentions called into question. No pats on the back for me. No accolades for upholding an ethical code of teaching or making a good packing list. Not the way I wanted to start a Christmas holiday, which should be about control, and peace, and good intentions.

Or should it? What is driving me this Christmas season, I wonder, and does it have anything to do with joy and gratitude for a baby born to poor parents in a backwoods town, one who happened to be the Son of God, and would later hijack the entire course of my life? Is this the engine that drives me, I wonder, or the simpler, blander hope of cookies, presents, and chats with family?

Maybe I should check my engine.

Comments

[Ed Eubanks]

May I say: thank you for upholding something of a standard when it comes to grades.

As a former teacher, I feel your pain-- and would just encourage you to be faster to delete those e-mails. Don't let them get to you.

As a former student, I wanted my grade to mean something-- which is impossible when everyone gets the grade they "want". Thanks for keeping a measure of meaning in the grades.

As a former Teacher's Assistant, I know the frustration of working with a professor whose instructions were to grade so that "the median grade is 90%". Again-- this neuters the significance and meaning of the work for those who actually earned a higher grade.

Hang in there. At least you're done with grading, and don't have work on it on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day (I spent many a Christmas Day grading...)!

[Paul Virtue]

David,

I remember a class in college with seniors who were not going to graduate because of their poor performance on the mid-term exam. Several of us had aced the exam. I felt like the prof was invalidating my grade when he allowed the students to resolve the issue with extra tests and manipulating the grading system to allow them to get a passing grade.

I would guess that a number of your students value the learning they experienced with you this semester. Unfortunately you probably won't hear from them for several years. They won't come thank you for a good grade, because they completed the work studied hard and learned. It would be inappropriate to thank you for the grade. However, I have had the opportunity after graduating to thank professors for the impact they had on my life.

I know that though you have not been my professor you have been an encouragement to my personal learning. I know that your heart is to help everyone around you do a better job of thinking. If some reject the gift that you are offering that is not a reflection on you, but a reflection on them.

Still I hope that you will give the fullness of grace to the students have been rude and insulting.

Yesterday I was hit with the truth of how much I live my life on a grid of fairness and not based on grace. These students have not done anything to earn your love and grace, but as a servant who has been forgiven millions you should forgive their debt of thousands. It may not help them, but it is part of the incarnation of the kingdom into King College through your act of imitating Jesus.

[You know who]

See what I mean? Not boring. Honest and self-examining is definately the way to go. So glad you didn't go the other route...dismissing your critics claims and examining their motives rather than taking the opportunity to scrutinize your own. That would have been boring, and there is a world full of boring people to make those types of defenses on your behalf.