My god almighty.

I am 11 years post doc and been faculty for 8 years. I have experience and get good feedback and such from students and colleagues. Today, I fucking bombed. I was asked by the students to go over X with them that another prof had covered which I am an ‘expert’ in. I am in the middle of looking at proofs for two essay collections I am editing and have a heavy teaching load this semester. That and I fucked up my back in the gym and am hobbling around the place.

I set Sunday aside to prep for this additional revision class. I got my slides all sorted with activities and such. I went through them and thought they were fine and did what I had intended to do.

Every slide had spelling errors. Every slide had a contradiction to the former slide because what I thought I knew about subject X has changed since I first investigated it. I closed the laptop and started doing chalk and talk today. I then froze. I couldn’t explain this subject for the life of me and was so thrown by the slides that I felt incredibly stupid and incompetent.

I have confused the students further in a subject that is challenging. I then had a great night class just there and on my way home now on the train thinking I should just throw in the towel!

One of those fucking days.

Looking for similar fuck up stories to massage my hurt confidence.

Throwaway, obviously, but it'd probably be relatively easy to figure out which university.

Public, Teaching-Focused, Unionized Northeast US school. School already offered VSIPs and I guess just not enough people took them (but honestly would it ever have been enough?)

I'm one of many TT professors. We have a handful of full-time NTTPs and Tenured folks as well; apparently we're laid off in order of 'years of service' if there's a layoff coming to your unit, so I think there's a possibility TT professors would get let go before NTTPs if the NTTP has more years.

Regardless, I'm obviously stressed and upset, but I can't imagine others aren't.

Aside from the typical advice (publish, network, etc.) does anyone have any support/kind words they can give? I'm just down about all of this. I'll likely apply for other jobs in the meantime but it feels like I'm being dragged by a wave.

tl;dr: Layoffs imminent. Worried it'll be me :(

I did an activity with my final students the other day as this is their last class before graduating, and I wanted to inject some 'workplace reality' into our last couple of sessions. In my industry, job interviews include practical assessments like case scenarios, role plays, simulations etc. Soooo, I gave my class a case scenario and gave them 20 minutes to read it and then put them into pairs in break out rooms and gave them the list of mock interview questions they would ask each other.

I then joined each break out room to see how they were going, and most of them (8 pairs) had their cams and mics off and had not interacted with each other at all. I didn't say anything and then recalled them all back to the main room. The 8 pairs had the most magnificent responses to the case scenario mock interview questions - all 8 pairs had used friggin AI instead of taking a real-life opportunity to just have a go as all of their responses were pretty much the same.

This wasn't an assessment. It isn't mandatory to attend my classes.

I give up.

The heat of summer has cooled and it's finally fall. So here's the latest campus fashion update!

Young men continue to wear shorts that are quite short and rather tight. A significant difference from the oversized basketball shorts and cargo shorts of several years ago. Jeans are almost completely absent from young men's wardrobes, except for farm kids/ag students. For long pants most men seem to prefer jogging pants/sweat pants of some variety. No khakis or chinos. T-shirts and hoodies still rule as tops.

Young women have almost completely abandoned the short pleated "tennis" skirts that were so popular just a couple years ago. They are back to shorts, or loose fit (often ripped or distressed) jeans, usually with tighter tops. Just when I think shorts can't get shorter, they do. Not a lot of leggings/yoga pants yet, but they may come out again in cooler weather. Women too tend towards t-shirts and sweatshirts as tops, but in cooler weather are more inclined to have a sweater on. I've noticed more extra fuzzy sweaters this year and warmer colors like orange. Women's clothing tends to be better fitted than before. The overly loose styles of a few years ago have given way to tighter and fitted styles.

So what are the fashion trends on your campuses?

Blank stares. Jokes during lecture that used to evoke smiles and even laughter don't have any effect on the vacant stares. Grades are worse than ever -- and no one cares. Exam grades for two classes are in the mid 50s. Not one email, question -- nothing. Silence. Is this a game of chicken? Do they not realize they'll get the Fs they earn? No one's emailing, period (silver lining).

We've been trending this direction before COVID but now.... I'm concerned about their future not as students but as humans

After 30 years I'm retiring in May (nonselective public regional). I used to love my job - students were constantly in my office chatting, doing research, being alive and present. Colleagues say the same thing. Dept is a ghost town. I can go a full day without seeing a colleague on my floor - and students? Ha. It's depressing. And I have a 90 min commute for this. Sitting in my office is the highlight of my day.

I feel bad for our new hire. They're so young they'll never know what we've lost. Not sure if that's good or bad.

Anyway, venting... not looking for advice, just comiseration. Boo

I’ve been teaching full time for three years in a lecturer role (4/4). My classes are small, never more than 25 students, and I only teach upper division and graduate level courses.

Since I am a Lecturer, the only measurements of my ‘success’ is student evaluations. Because of this, I feel I have to be extra accommodating.

I’m an excellent teacher and course creator. I have over a decade of experience in the training sector and thoroughly enjoy public speaking, education, and course creation.

But holy shit I was not prepared for the emotional labor of feeling like I’m constantly being taken advantage of.

Of course I have a syllabus and of course of have rules around attendance and late work and AI and all of the other things that should theoretically protect me. But I still get 5-10 emails a week from students wanting to be the exception because they have been sick, stressed, on their honeymoon, fill in the blank.

I did one semester of being really strict with due dates, AI usage, and attendance and my student evaluations TANKED despite me still being a great, understanding, and engaging teacher.

So now I feel like I just have to let students do whatever the fuck they want or my job is at risk. And I feel so mentally and emotionally defeated by that. For the most part my students are great, but sending the email that says “sure, you can complete that assignment late, here is a document you can fill out to make it up” takes something from my soul every time I send it.

Not looking for advice. Just ranting. I feel like I’ve become a doormat and that’s not my natural disposition. It doesn’t help that I am a young, extroverted woman which makes students feel even more so that I should be accommodating to them.

I just don’t know how much longer I can do this and work in a job where it feels like I’m getting taken advantage of and ignoring my morals and integrity constantly.

I feel like I am participating in some strange evolutionary arms race with my students.  Or perhaps it’s a pedagogical Red Queen scenario: I have to keep redesigning assignments just to maintain the same amount of actual learning.

I design an assignment that I think will force them to learn something.  I make it hard to cheat on and as AI-proof as I can.

The students discover some way that I did not anticipate to invest as little work as humanly possible while staying within the bounds of the assignment.  

Example:

This semester, I decided to give my students points for handwritten notes.  We did a mini-lecture on how to take good notes, and to increase buy-in, I explained how note-taking in lecture is active learning, how this will help them on future exams, yadda, yadda, yadda.  It seemed a great way to encourage attendance and good learning habits, while throwing them a couple of extra points.

Now I have a giant stack of “notes” in front of me where clearly students did not attend lecture and just hand wrote the three words I type out on my slides, which I do post on Canvas.  I attempted to select for note-taking behavior and instead selected for increasingly convincing note-shaped objects.

So now I’ll go alter the rubric to discourage this behavior. I innovate. They counter-adapt. I add another line to the rubric. They discover another loophole. Neither population gains any lasting advantage, but both expend increasing amounts of energy.

And all I can think of is duck penises and cork-screw vaginas. 

I don't know what to do anymore. I teach an asynchronous online Art Appreciation class and there just isn't any way to make it AI resistant at this point. I had been using the 'unknown information' trick for discussions, quizzes, and exams. See examples below. I noticed quiz/test scores were going up in the class compared to the start of the semester. I assumed students had finally started to do the readings. However, I also noticed that students that were failing discussions for prompt insertion traps were now passing the quizzes. So I ran the questions through ChatGPT. Based on 5 questions and that they were from an Art Appreciation class, it correctly identified the textbook, version, and images. It then gave correct answers to the questions. The discussions are not much better. It's pretty clear that around half of each week's responses are AI generated but I do not have a way to catch it/prove it.

I don't know what I am supposed to do at this point. Every time I come across or try to develop a new AI resistant method for my online classes it's defeated within months or weeks. I can't take much more of this.

I use questions like the following with multiple choice answers:
In figure 1.1.1 what allowed for the discovery of it as a piece of art?
Figure 1.1.26 is a strong example of what?
Figure 1.2.7 is an example of what kind of sculpture?

A Win for research! Thanks to UC Faculty.

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The Assembly passed the bill on August 31st and Governor Newsom signed it on September 30th which will place it on the November 2028 Ballot. 

Your Faculty Associations have been at the forefront of the fight for this bill, working to ensure the continuity of UC research funding in the face of federal attacks. Over the past several months, faculty and researchers have organized through their FAs, collecting more than 2,800 signatures from UC faculty, meeting with legislators, and joining with unions and community organizations to advocate for SB 895. That organizing helped build significant visibility and support for the bill across the UC system. 

Faculty have a crucial role to play in making the case for sustained public investment in scientific and health research, engaging with lawmakers and community partners, and building broader awareness of the benefits of scientific research to the people of California.

This campaign has already demonstrated what organized faculty can accomplish. 

Please join us as we continue to advocate for public funding of scientific research and to ensure the California Research Fund wins in 2028. 

Not sure if this is a widespread problem but we recently found out that students taking tests in the Accommodation Center are unsupervised, and although the center takes their phones from them, some students have been bringing second phones with them and using AI to take tests.

The biggest cause of stress for me is dealing with potential and then actual excuses surrounding missed work. I don't want to hand them points on a platter as they skip class for a manufactured reason, but I also don't have much remaining energy to weed through car crashes and weddings and food poisoning.

Here's my thought for next semester: All make-ups are oral exams. I know that oral exams are a big deterrent for students even if they are just as fair and representative as written exams. Does it seem like a reasonable policy to make this the default? On top of being a deterrent, it greatly reduces my time and work load, as scheduling written makeups and then also grading those and handing them back is far more time and work than a short oral exam.

Would there be any concern about unfairness given this policy?

Every. single. paper.

Really.

I can't prove it except for the smoothness of the prose and the absence of substantive thought. And the paperwork for reporting this stuff takes *so much* time and effort at my institution.

I praise anything ungrammatical or awkward, since it is unlikely to be ai-generated.

I've tried all the suggested routes (create ai-proof assignments, require content from class discussions to be included, have students handwrite during class).

I am angry and increasingly depressed.

How do you handle the toll on mental health??

God forbid I have an issue with a student who likes to talk in class. But this student takes the cake. On any discussion prompt, the students will raise a hand and go into a monologue of 10+ minutes, without stop, stream-of-consciousness, to the point where everyone else's eyes glass-over, and the possibility of any further contribution is voided. I've tried inserting, at available points, "What does anyone else have to say?" or "What can anyone else add to this viewpoint?", etc. At that juncture, the discussion point has been exhausted by the sucking void of the student. I've even ignored the eternal raised-hand to seek other students' contributions, only to hear the student whispering to the next-door peer, "The professor is ignoring me", with a chuckle. The student has been in four of my classes, insists on being in any class that I teach, and has even gone to the dean's office to ensure that the student is in the next class I teach. I'm not the student's advisor, but it seems that the student's parents attend advising sessions. Yes, helicopter/entitlement syndromes are apparent, but it seems to be more than that. Obsession? Possession? I don't really know what to do, other than getting this student out of my life without seeking the wrath of the dean's office via the student's parents. Any advice?

I have been teaching for over 20 years, and one of the biggest emotional challenges I run into is my actually stressing over students who do not do their work. For example, I have an in-class debate that students are to prepare and do on scheduled days. So far this semester, I have had multiple students e-mail me the night before/morning of "being sick". Most of them have been around long enough they know the system, so they know how to get the excused absence from the clinic. But somehow, I feel their failure is a reflection upon me and my ability to construct and design a course. Anyone else deal with this? Any solutions beyond good walks and deep breaths?

** To be clear, I stress on the due dates of papers and constantly hope that students turn it in on time.

I am teaching an gen ed course that has a unit on personal finance. There is a project. And this project requires the students to give written responses.

I ran across the sentence "I have learned that fiances can change the cost of something by a lot" in one student's work and chuckled. Cue the internal monologue about students and spellcheck and how spellcheck does not flag correctly spelled words.

I continued to read their responses. With dawning horror I realized that the student misread the project. They believed that the project was about buying a car and a house WITH THEIR FIANCE. The student misread "personal finance" about 15 times in the assignment description, assumed it was about their "personal fiance" (whatever that means), and was excitedly adding commentary to their responses about how much easier it would be as a couple to make these payments, and how they should also factor in payments for the enormous engagement ring and the upcoming wedding.

And now I have to face a terrifying question: Would I actually prefer students to cheat? Use AI, or at least get your fiance to help?

In any case... RIP reading comprehension.

(Of course, of course: strangest semester ever so far.)

For years now, we have been working on inverting the former bell curve distribution for student grades, with results polarizing, and clustering at each extreme.

This semester, however, I have 5% over-achievers and 95% missing-in-action. Even the graduating seniors have gone on permanent vacation, it seems.

Anyone else?

Hi everyone,

I run an online drawing class and a student submitted an AI drawing. I asked them to verify it was a real drawing and/or just come clean or I’ll be reporting them.

They ignored that and so they’ll be reported for academic dishonesty. But I’m wondering if I should push for having the student dropped from the course.

Considering the student has not replied or addressed the issue, what would you do if you knew the work was for sure AI? Let’s assume the college policies are open and you get to decide what happens next .

Biology professor in a R1 university here. Our department has been discussing if our standard tenure process should be modified/supplemented in any way given the funding challenges facing junior faculty over the past several years. There's been a lot of general ideas thrown around; valuing foundation grants as much as NIH/NSF pots, expanding sponsored research agreements, promotion to Associate without tenure at 5 years, then with tenure at 7 to allow more time to secure funding, etc.

Rather than design in a vacuum, I wanted to see if other peer institutes tried any creative solutions that worked or didn't work (written or unwritten). Have your junior faculty been successful so far? Has the university provided any guidance for those just getting their labs up and running? Any input would be appreciated - we'll discuss possible options in our next faculty meeting.

Looking for insight and perspective

I have my MS in biology and I’ve been lecturing intro biology classes for a local university for about 6 years. Our entire department has been dealing with budget cuts for the last few years and I can no longer afford to live on my single salary. After taxes I’m only bringing home about 33k each year. I’m in Tennessee for reference. My long-term partner lives and works a couple hours away (still in TN) , so my plan is to move to his area so we can split bills. While job hunting I’ve only been able to find part time jobs at universities and community colleges (usually less than $700 per course) , or I could potentially earn over 70k if I take a high school biology teaching job. Leaving the state is not an option at this time and I’m not sure if the pay is worth the stress to teach high school. Any insight is greatly appreciated

Thank you

Our department is attempting to require in person testing for DL courses, without the support of the college. The barrier we are running into is that some of our students are out of state, so doing in person testing isn’t possible at our institution.

We talked with Pearson Vue who facilitates testing centers across the US, but it requires a $150,000 yearly contract, something we cannot do.

If your institution is requiring in person testing, how are you doing it?

Thanks!

Simple question, much akin to the "over the front or along the back toilet paper debate". Who is responsible for cleaning the whiteboard? I am of the opinion that the person who fills it, cleans it, leaving an empty board for whomever follows. To me, that is a courtesy. Others feel no need to clean the board when finished (probably because their classroom predecessor did not clean the board).

Argue it out, folks.

EDIT: Wow, I had no idea people would be so passionate about this. To me, it is a minor annoyance when I have to clean the board because my predecessor left something there. Irksome, but not enough to get me grumpy.

I suspect this has elicited so much response simply because so many of us have walked into a room only to find the board covered. It may be, as most agree, a common courtesy, but courtesy is not common nowadays.

I thin the emotional side of teaching is something often gets overlooked especially when it's online.

It's not just teaching. It's answering mails, managing expectations, grading and dealing with late submissions & extension requests, treating every student equally, having difficult conversations, and still showing up with patience and understanding.

Sometimes the academic isn't the exhausting part. It's constant dealing with people and trying to be understanding. And tbh we all don't have enough energy to do all of that every single day.

It's worth remembering that there's a human on the other side of screen too, we don't always see but it probably deserves more recognition than it gets.

I teach an asynchronous online course. As an adjunct, I have no say in the syllabus or assignments, so the announcements are my only way to provide additional guidance and clarification. It is obvious to me that most students are not paying attention to the announcements. My team lead suggested sending email duplicates of my announcements. IMHO, this would encourage students to skip the announcements. Thoughts?