I realize this is a fairly old post, but I just found it and couldn’t resist commenting.

Sometimes I wonder how professors with degrees in English cope with this sort of things.

I’m not a professor, let alone an English professor; I’m a student. However, I know exactly how I would deal with the issue: At the beginning of the year, I would state that any communication with me has the potential to affect your grade. If you send me an email which shows you have only the most basic grasp of the language, your grade will be reduced to reflect that.

Sometimes I wonder how professors with degrees in English cope with this sort of things.

I make fun of English teachers for how anal they are about stuff, and I hate this crap. I can only imagine how they feel.

“See you in my section next term, chump.”

That’s exactly how I would deal with it, no matter what subject I was teaching. (OK, I probably wouldn’t actually call them “chump”, and I probably wouldn’t expect to see them in my next section, as they would presumably avoid me like the plague, but I would fail them if they didn’t shape up right quick.)

@Tino – Yeah, it is scary. It is even scarier that on the exam they were able to tell them apart, which tells me they simply memorized the answers, and then promptly forgot them 5 minutes after the exam.

Oh, btw – I accidentally deleted your post while pruning out comment spam. Sorry about that. I plugged it back in, but the user agent looks different. :P

@Teague – funny you mention that. My brother actually was kicked out politely asked by the instructor to drop his creative writing class because he was being “to honest” when “reviewing” stories written by his peers. Apparently his review made someone cry, so he ended up with a WP and had to retake the class next semester. At that point he decided all his reviews will look like “great job, I really enjoyed reading it” :P

[quote post=”2384″] The labs do require Office 2007 because that’s what we are teaching them[/quote]

I hope I am not the only one who finds it scary that a person being trained in Office 2007 refer to it as “Windows 2007″…

Luke, you and I have been down this road before. Insert something about glass houses and heavy, solid objects in motion. ;)

Back in the early ’90s, I was in college. In the English class I took, we were separated into groups of 4-5. We had to review and grade the papers of the others in our group, and I ended up feeling the same way about some of them as you do about these kids. That was before text messaging, so the ones that had me shaking my head often read like your posts. :D I guess the new habits just make you look good by comparison, eh? ;)

[quote post=”2384″]I just wish you’d update /dev/random more often.[/quote]

Btw, me too. I just seem to have less and less time to scour the interwebs for silly pictures. I’ll do my best though. :)

[quote comment=”8716″]If you really had a lab that required Office 2007, maybe it was meant as a complaint about that? “Hey, I had even to get into campus to do your annoying assignment!”[/quote]

Yeah, probably. The labs do require Office 2007 because that’s what we are teaching them. :P

If you really had a lab that required Office 2007, maybe it was meant as a complaint about that? “Hey, I had even to get into campus to do your annoying assignment!”

Heh, it actually does make more sense now. Still, why would this person feel that it was necessary for me to know *where* they did their assignment. Go figure.

Someone in my IT GCSE class once said something about Windows 2003 then wondered why the teacher and the students who actually knew stuff (there were about 4 of us) were laughing at him.

As for

Hello, professor….I completed lab was an able to do so at home because i do did not windows 2007. So i completed in the comp. lab on campus.

I’m thinking that “was an able” either means “wasn’t able” or “was unable”, half the time these funky spelling errors sound vaguely like the thing they were aiming for if you say it phonetically.

So the whole thing would come through to “I completed the lab, was unable to do so at home because I don’t have Office ’07. So I did it on campus”

But yeah.. god knows what he was on about really :mrgreen:

This happens to me as well, so maybe I have gained some skills in interpreting these im-by-email:

“Hello, professor….I completed lab was an able to do so at home because i do did not windows 2007. So i completed in the comp. lab on campus.”

I think it means something like this:

“Dear Professor Maciak, I have completed the lab assignment. However, I was unable to do so at home, because I do not own Ms Office 2007. Instead I had to do the assignment at the computer lab at campus.”

Why s/he would want to tell you this, I have no idea. Also Ms Office 2007 is just a guess about what “windows 2007” really means.

Ps. My first post; great blog. I just wish you’d update /dev/random more often.