[Yale professor: My students aren’t snowflakes, and they don’t melt](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/11/13/yale-professor-my-students-arent-snowflakes-and-they-dont-melt/)
Professor Berry is known to deliver high quality teaching. I like his article a lot. We, including our students, all need to move on; we have a life to live.
I virtually did not change any thing for my classes; e,g, due days for assignments or test days. The main mission of a university is education, not politics.
Of course, I offered some degree of freedom to those students who have been under stress related to the election and its outcome. My policy is that they could have a make up, and they could have extended deadlines for assignments. I can give them an incomplete. But they need to EARN their grades; they are human beings and not snowflakes. The academic standard is the same regardless of whether it is an election year.
In the real world, no employer or client is going to give you an extension on a deadline because of the election.
In the real world, I give my employees PTO to use as they wish, @roethlisburger
But in the real world, you don’t use that PTO on a day you have a critical meeting with a sponsor, or a deadline, unless something really extraordinary happens (e.g., death in the family); in the real world, you figure out how to meet that deadline ahead of time if you need to be off, or you do whatever you can to meet critical work requirements, even if it means a bit of temporary personal inconvenience or pain. And let’s face it, in the real world, PTO doesn’t exist everywhere … you show up, or you lose your job, period. Students need to learn coping skills, like how to compartmentalize … put your feelings aside for a period, do your job, and then come back to them. And not every feeling is justified or should be acted upon … apply some rational thought to how you respond. It is possible. It’s called being a grown up.
Spoke to my DS, a junior in college, last night. I asked him how things had been on his campus. He said business as usual. Some of his profs made mention of the election in passing; most did not. He had a big midterm at 10 AM on Weds. Nobody missed it. Nobody complained. His prof congratulated them on Friday, after having read about the Yale professor, for showing up and taking the test on Weds, despite the election.
Actually, in my real world, you may use that PTO – meetings or no meetings – because a stomach virus has kept you up all night, or your nanny is sick, or your teenager broke a wire on her braces and needs an emergency trip to the orthodontist, or your car is leaking oil and needs to go to the dealer, etc., etc.
A college student would not be allowed to miss an exam to deal with any of these things.
When my kids were in college and applying for jobs, they had to schedule job interviews so that they didn’t conflict with exams. They weren’t entitled to a make-up exams because of a job interviews. This meant missing opportunities to interview for companies that visited campus for only one day.
In contrast, one time when I had a contract job that was ending on a specific date, I was given full freedom to do whatever was necessary to secure myself my next job – including going to job interviews on days when it wasn’t necessarily convenient for my current employer.
In my experience, college is a WAY more inflexible environment than most jobs.
My 30 years of experience across multiple industries has been in a world more like the one @ailinsh1 describes that @Marian 's. There are undoubtedly a range of experiences out there but I cannot recall ever thinking that my business life was more flexible than my college life.
There is a difference between needing time off to go to an interview or doctor’s appointment or to deal with a death in the family, and taking time off because you’ve had an emotional upset, or some life event didn’t play out your way. The former requires your physical presence elsewhere, while the latter does not. Imagine if students couldn’t bear to attend class the day after they lost their conference championship game, or received their 10th consecutive rejection for a summer internship, or were dumped by their long-time boyfriend or girlfriend, or miserably failed their freshman year midterms–any of which could be far more personally upsetting to students than the outcome of a Presidential election. There would be no end to missing class!
Furthermore, the professor’s offer itself validates the idea that it’s OK to allow one’s emotions to interfere with important obligations. As adults, we all know we really can’t do that because many people depend on our work and our attention to our responsibilities. Second, an offer like this could create a hostile learning environment for those students on the other side, since people who still manage to show up might be presumed to be “the culprits” (e.g. racists, misogynists, islamaphobes, ignorant, uneducated, just wrong) or not politically engaged enough (or else they also would be too upset to come).
As someone who fell asleep from 9:30-12:30 election night, then woke up and made the mistake of looking at what was happening, being horrified and then unable, literally, to fall back asleep until 10am on Wednesday… I appreciated everything he said.
Yale is obviously a tough place. It is challenging. It is very hard work. This professor showed a heart and gave his students respect and a choice. The choice was between easier in the short run vs easier in the long run. The students responded with respect and by making a choice without whining or complaining.
It’s weird to me that it’s even a little bit controversial.
My daughter lost a playoff game to the arch rival when she was a junior. It was a huge deal to her. Everyone else on the team, and I do mean everyone, was ‘skipping’ school the next day (and by skipping I mean their parents excused them) plus the boys team lost too and they were skipping, but my D was cursed with the meanest mother in the entire world and I said if she skipped it was on her but I wasn’t excusing her. There was ranting, there was slamming of doors, there was the horror of having to ride the school bus as her normal ride was skipping. I received several calls and texts that she hoped I was happy that I’d ruined her life. That was the last straw and I told her to ride that big ugly yellow bus home and wait for me.
In the end, she got bonus points from her APUSH teacher as she was one of TWO kids in class that day and the teacher was more like me, the mean mother, and thought there were too many ‘excused’ absences especially since the Black Plague wasn’t making a run through our community. My daughter learned to put things in perspective. It drove me crazy that the other parents constantly excused their kids from school.
Maybe Yale students should have attended class and discussed how the electoral college works, how some polls are unreliable, how some of them may not have even voted (because 5.5 million fewer people voted in 2016 than in 2012), about what they could do about the election (not much) and what they can do to change it in the future (lots). I’d think that would be a lot better than missing classes and staying home with the covers over their heads.
My sister teaches 4th grade and a lot of her students were scared and upset about the election, but their parents are undocumented and those kids have a right to be scared. They talked about the constitution and about what the president could and couldn’t do and the kids felt better by talking about it and not staying home crying about it.
"My sister teaches 4th grade and a lot of her students were scared and upset about the election, but their parents are undocumented and those kids have a right to be scared. "
Many of these college students are undocumented, or minorities or non-christians, or non-hetero, or victims of sexual assault, etc. I don’t think losing a playoff game and a “tough mom” stance is analogous to the situation here for these individuals. I’ll leave it at that to avoid more detail which could be deemed political.
^^ exactly. Wallowing in your own personal echo/cry chamber does nothing but make it worse. Getting up, washing your face, putting your big girl/boy pants on, and going out into the world actually helps put things in perspective. The sun still comes up. People are still kind. You get the chance to hear from people who have lived through elections their candidate has lost before that even if you think the country is ending, it isn’t. You maybe commiserate with others, but then also get your focus shifted off of yourself and the election when you hear of someone who had a real, true, personal tragedy occur in the last 24 hours, and suddenly who won the election isn’t nearly so important. My aunt is very politically involved … she was a big-time advocate/activist for the ERA back in the day. She worked Clinton’s campaign (all 3 of them … 2 for Bill, this one for Hillary). And yet, on election day, when her husband received a cancer diagnosis that afternoon, suddenly, appropriately, the election didn’t matter a bit anymore.
“And yet, on election day, when her husband received a cancer diagnosis that afternoon, suddenly, appropriately, the election didn’t matter a bit anymore.”
Sorry to hear about your uncle and I hope his prognosis is a positive one. But, yes, it does matter if administrative changes result in people not having adequate healthcare coverage to treat their cancer in the future.
A dear friend of mine, an extremely hardworking and highly successful professor (she’s gotten around 7 million in grant funding over the past five years), said the day after the election, “I cannot pretend this is normal. I cannot pretend politics has no greater meaning in our lives.” She has really good reason to feel that way–her mother survived Nazi Germany and Stalin’s East Germany. She’s weathered a ton of personal tragedies, and she was still deeply affected by this election. We chide people for political apathy and now we’re chiding them for caring?
Going back to the article, the prof. gave his students fair and reasonable options that showed kindness, thoughtfulness combined with an understanding that the work does have to get done. Kudos.
Regarding people’s different experiences in the “real working world,” such as PTO or no PTO, I think this sort of thing really highlights what happened in this election. Americans - who have all worked equally hard - have had such different/unequal treatment and experiences. Some have enjoyed fat corporate jobs with comprehensive and affordable healthcare and benefits like PTO. Others have had a very uncertain go of it, even while working 2-3 jobs.
Count me as someone who did not/does not like the result of this election, but I will admit that it has opened my eyes to the plight of the little guy out there. I guess some of these people are fed up with PTO for some but not for all.
I do think if the professor had been thinking he’d have scheduled the test for another day - not because we are special snowflakes and are feeling upset, but because people usually do stay up late on election night to find out the results. I didn’t schedule any early morning meetings for the day after the elections for just this reason.
I learned long ago that half of the electorate is going to be upset after election day. It is a normal emotion. This election is different from most not based on politics but rather the character of the man who won. I do tip my hat to the winners yet understand the real fear of some of the losers. We as a nation will move forward regardless.
Then they should have felt comforted that they are not alone, that others support them out in the open, in classes, while they are taking exams and going to class …including those who are white, christian, hetero, not victims of sexual assault.at Yale.
That’s what the 4th graders did, they continued with their lives, they talked about the issues, they talked about their fears and how to help their parents. My sister, who was an attorney and a partner with a Wall Street firm for years before becoming a teacher, knows the law, the constitution so they discussed it. Most of these kids are poor. The kids have to translate for their parents when dealing with government officials, police, school officials and they are often scared about what can happen when they don’t know what is going on. They don’t have the time to protest and complain or take a few days to get over it. Their parents have to work and they have to go to school and they need to know how to deal with the situation. Not exactly the same as a Yale student upset about losing and wanting some time to process. Had they stayed home from school last Wednesday, they wouldn’t have been watching MSNBC or talking to their parents trying to understand their legal position, they would have been watching cartoons or playing video games to avoid the issues. Instead, they went to school and talked about it.