Strange Students

As part of the correspondence stats course I helped develop over the summer, I get various things to grade. I had one student e-mail me with a long harangue about what she didn't like about the course, and didn't even realize that she'd attached her first nonautomated assignment to the thing. Then she sent the long harangue again the next day. And the next. I stared at it, and decided to ignore it, still not noticing that she'd attached an assignment to this nearly incoherent rant. So...that assignment was late being graded, and my partner in crime, who did most of the actual work developing the course, is going to take over grading the rest of her work. I'm both relieved and annoyed by this development, but, given that I just cringe when I see her name on an e-mail heading, it's probably for the best.

FYI: the assignment was also nearly incoherent, but not incoherent enough that she didn't pass. You could tell that she thought big words were impressive but had no idea how to actually use them. If this were an English class, that would have had more of an impact on her grade. As it was, I docked a point here and there for the more egregious absurdities, and otherwise just hunted for the relevant information.

I have now reached the point of the semester where I'm ready for it to be over. It usually happens late October, but I was a bit too busy being ill to notice it then. One symptom of this is that I'm quite happy to see Christmas displays popping up like weeds in stores.