Nov 10, 2025
Student: I am so fucking lost. I don't know how to do this paper.
Me: Did you read the assignment instructions?
Student: No.
😒🙃
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Student: I am so fucking lost. I don't know how to do this paper.
Me: Did you read the assignment instructions?
Student: No.
😒🙃
Dear college students:
STOP sharing your files with me via email. I do not need a thousand student assignments cluttering up my onedrive or my google drive. Learn to download and submit a fucking file before I lose my goddamn mind.
your post about students writing waaaaay more words than asked for made me laugh but also cry because WHY do they do that? i've seen students who have gotten an assignment with very clear instructions on how much they should write and still somehow end up with 1k more than that. the thing i/most teachers here does is that we just stop reading when we've reached the assigned word count. everything after that won't be read/taken in accout when setting the grade. AND STILL!!!!! there's students who turn in goddamn novells when all that's asked for is a one page thing. whyyyyyyyy.
Anon, I truly do not understand it. I'm convinced they think more words equals better, but we talk at length about concision and clarity and what's appropriate for the assignment and how going significantly over word count can be just as bad as going under, but it just never seems to take.
I will say, I teach composition, and the department rule is that word counts are just guidelines and that students shouldn't worry too much about word count, so I think that plays in, but my students just take it to the extreme. Sometimes, I just want to sit them down and be like "what kind of mood would it put you in if you expected you were about to read 1000 words, and suddenly it became 4000? Is that a mood you want your teacher in when they're grading?" Like I can't get these students to do a 200 word reading to prepare for class, but they're gonna hand me ten times that and expect me to read every word for grading??
Like, please, for the love of everything, just follow the actual guidelines.
And honestly, the biggest problem is that it's never actually good writing. It's just all wordy bullshit that doesn't actually say anything for like 75% of the extra long papers. But they never take any actual time to re-read or revise for wordiness, so I just have to wade through a bunch of vague, poorly constructed points only for them to then come crying to me when they get anything other than an A.
I do love my students. Many of them do try, and they have good intentions, but they let their own vision of what they think is good writing get in the way of actually following the assignment expectations, and it is truly exhausting.
Dear college students:
If I ask you for approximately 1200 words, maybe don't give me 4000+, please and thank you.
Love reading my students' work only to find that they literally submitted the exact same thing for the final as they did for the draft, completely ignoring the detailed feedback I provided for them.
Worksheet: explain how you know this source uses research
Student: *writing about the dangers of fake news* it's on the internet
Me: 🧐😒🤦♀️
Me, 15 times during class: This short story is NOT a poem. DO NOT label it a narrative poem on the quiz. It is parody. The answer is PARODY. Write it down. Not a poem. Parody. WRITE IT DOWN. The quiz is open note. WRITE IT DOWN AND USE YOUR NOTES. This short story is PARODY.
50% of my students on the quiz: Narrative poem.
Me: 🤦♀️🙃
Dear college students:
For the love of everything, STOP putting rhetorical questions in your essays. They add exactly zero to the content and only serve to annoy your instructors.