End of the Semester
A semester seems to be an eternity when it begins. You look at the syllabus you have created for a course and you see something like sixteen weeks laid out ahead of you. That’s a something like fifty hours of class time lectures, hours of reading papers and grading exams, hunting for parking spots and lots of freeway time back and forth to campus. Then, before you know it, its the end of the semester and you’re looking at one last class on the syllabus, receptor of the final exams and the grading thereof and, finally, figuring out everyone’s grades so that the class can go on its merry way to their holidays and, ultimately, their next semester.
This week I have two last classes on two nights in a row.. I already have the PowerPoints prepared for those classes. I like to spend the last class doing three things. I will start by giving the class ten minutes to do their course evaluations. I learned a hard lesson last year by mandating the evaluations. Students are like everyone else, they do not like to be ordered to do anything. I believe it cost me on my evaluations to have mandated them, so now its just a plea and a guilt trip. Next, I will reprise the whole semester, using slides from each of the prior class lectures. I will do my best to be profound with that final review. Then I will end by giving everyone a chance to go over the final take-home exam questions, should they have any. In the ethics class I have given them ten questions and required them to choose six to answer using a tweet-length answer of 280 characters. In the finance class I have been more straightforward and given them six questions that they must answer, no length specified. Ethics needs to be more crisp and finance required more articulation. I anticipate that each of the two classes will end somewhat earlier than the allotted time. And then its over. There is a real sense of finality in teaching courses. They start and then they end.
Truth be told, the courses don’t really end for me until I grade the tests and send out and submit the final grades. Even then, it ain’t really over for another month or two until the University compiles the course evaluation data and I get a chance to see what the students thought of my teaching and the overall course. As far as the grading goes, I am charged with curving the course grades to an A-/B+ average and I tend to take the tracking of that fairly seriously. I think it is fair to say that I am a pretty lenient (some might say easy) grader. My thinking is that these are graduate students that average about thirty years old. They are mostly already in the working world and they are trying to up their game and career by adding an MBA credential. Attendance to my classes is always quite good and while some students are occasionally barely deserving of a respectable grade, most of the student product is somewhere between decent and extremely good. I am always particularly impressed by the output of a handful of students and this semester is no different in that regard. But just in case, I hold back about 20% of the grade for my discretion based on what I call class participation. I assure the students that it will only make a ½ grade difference, but that still makes them understand that they both need to participate and that I hold some degree of subjective component of their grade in my hands.
My view is that as grad students, a B is a message that the student hasn’t really applied themselves or needs to rethink their skill base. The only students that have gotten less than a B- in my courses are ones who do something particularly unacceptable like not hand in an assignment or give me cause to question their integrity. I’m not sure how much any students really cares about the difference between an A or an A- (USD does not give A+ grades), but invariably some do, so I do occasionally get some final grade questioning. It always seems to work out. In my early years of teaching at Cornell I always found that the best students were the foreign students. They simply took the learning experience more seriously and were more diligent. Those were most often students from India, China and Eastern Europe. It may just be a fluke, but this semester, two of my worst students are Asian. They neither seem to take the course so seriously and their assignments have been very weak by any standards. If I were being totally honest, they might not even make the bar of a C grade. As it is, I suspect they will be getting B/B- grades and will do me the unintended service of keeping my overall course average down.
Almost as soon as I get done with these classes, and well before I get the course evaluations, I have to prepare the syllabus for my next semester course. I have been asked to teach the ethics course again next semester, which will be the third time around for the course. the course morphed a bit this semester from last and will morph some more from what I have learned this semester. All things considered, I think I know how to teach the course well now and unless my course evaluations are worse than I expect (which will be too late to alter the syllabus anyway), I think it will be a good and well-received course.
This semester I have 42 students (actually only 37 since five take both courses). Next semester, with only one course to teach with a maximum of 40 students, which I hope will be no more than 20 since ethics needs to be a class of broad topic debate, it will be an easier go since it will involve only one night per week. It’s too soon to know what the Fall of ‘23 holds for me since I operate on a one semester advance notice basis and won’t be asked until the middle of the Spring if there is asking to be done. I’ve already decided to teach next Fall is asked. If not asked, that will likely end my tenure with USD. What happens in 2024 is simply too far out to worry about at this point.
I like teaching, but I’ve also done it enough to know that I could stop doing it and not miss it terribly. At this point in my life, I will find things to fill my days and give my week structure if its not about driving in to teach a class in the evening. Perhaps the best part of staying on the program is that it not only gives me structure to my week, but to my year as well. We are leaving for NYC to see the kids for our annual holiday visit the day after classes end. I have the better part of two months before I have to teach again and I know that its silly to say this, but it feels like I’m on vacation when I’m not teaching and in between semesters. Why are we all so programmed to our work schedules that we think in terms of vacations, even when we are supposed to be retired? I have no idea why that is, but I do know that I’m always happy to be at the end of my semester.