Most of the time, my students are awesome. There are times, however, when there is that one student who seeks to have drama in his or her life. That drama sometimes comes in the form of a final exam review that goes wrong.
Ordinarily, I’m happy to review final exams with students. Ordinarily, students come to discuss their exams in order to learn what mistakes they made, and how to improve next time. There are times, however, when the exam discussion is not about those two things. In those bad discussions, the issue is the grade, and the student’s very skewed self-perception. After a prolonged discussion, my patience depletes. Here are REAL COMMENTS students have made to me about their exams. What I say to them is in quotations, and what I’m thinking is in italics. I’m not so proud of my thoughts in these times. I very clearly need to work on practicing my patience.