<p>And it isn’t as though I’m saying it’s not true, I just don’t know how anyone could possibly write about it in an interesting and original way-- it’s not exactly a novel observation that should shock the masses.</p>
<p>No, I agree. It’s probably a story as old as the human race. But personally, I’m a big fan of your generation. Obviously there are bad apples in any group of people, and maybe I’m just blessed, but most of the young people I know – my D and her friends – are responsible, hard-working, well-mannered, and just flat-out interesting. IMO you guys will handle the world better than we have. :)</p>
<p>Unfortunately, college professors are now dealing with behavior issues high school teachers have been dealing with for years - namely, students who do not take kindly to being chided or corrected in class. Student complaints to department heads and Deans of Students abound, often encouraged by parents. (Grade challenges are also on the rise.)</p>
<p>(Because of this, many professors now feel the need to meticulously document interactions with some of their students.)</p>
<p>Combine this trend with the increasing importance paid to students’ evaluations of instructors (which can be the death knell for a professor on tenure track.) Result: increasingly, professors feel the need to choose between appropriate conduct in the classroom and keeping their jobs.</p>
<p>Upthread, some one mentioned that older, more experienced professors are more willing to intervene in a disruptive class. One word: tenure.</p>
<p>Here’s something else interesting: I learned recently that professors sometimes struggle more with with classes that are part of a Learning Community, or even an honors program. While the students may be of a higher academic caliber, their familiarity with each other (living together, several classes together) can result in higher-than-normal disruptive behaviors, group grade-kvetching, and - wait for it - plagiarism.</p>
<p>It will be the scariest blog on the web. (And the funniest. Do it.)</p>
<p>Encounters with “older non traditional conceited students in college.”</p>
<p>Wow! How many encounters are we talking about?</p>
<p>^I took a Spanish class once and ended up sitting next to a woman who was in her 50s or 60s, who regularly tried to copy off all my papers and would wait for me to do all the work when we were assigned to work with a partner. And it was awkward, because I didn’t feel like I could tell her to buzz off as easily as I could have someone my age-- it felt like calling my grandma a cheater. </p>
<p>That was a really interesting class simply because I was probably the only person younger than 40, besides the professor who was in her mid to late twenties. Lots of people coming into class with their briefcases straight from work, who seemed not to know that it was uncool to be getting up to leave the room to answer a call every five minutes, or to ask exhaustive only semi-on topic questions that would be better suited for office hours or emails, or not understanding when “help” became “cheating.” I think most of them meant well but had been out of school so long they had no idea how to do it anymore. It was an interesting class in contrast to the typical college class with students in their late teens and twenties. Personally, I thought the older students were just as disruptive if not moreso than the younger students in other classes, just in a different, less rude way. </p>
<p>I appreciated the experience just because it was awesome to see 20 different examples of how people intended to capitalize on their foreign language study in their careers, since most people were there to learn what they considered to be a job skill to advance their current careers. But it was definitely a frustrating class.</p>