Received via email tonight (personal data changed to protect the student’s identity):
hello professor
this is ********** in your ********** class, according to a friend in the class that you gave back the exam 2 grades in class which i asked you for it before i left the class on monday, you told me you didnt have them graded yet and do not know when you will, may i please know my first exam grade(after corrections) and the 2nd exam grade please?
if possible, i would like to know my average up to this point before the final exam so i can estimate how much i need to get on final in order to get an A in your class, since i do not know any assignment grades after the midterm drop point. it was very hard for me with school work this semester. Regardless of my (medical condition), i kept up with the assignment due days (except ch9 hw, my (medical treatment) prevented me to do them on time).
greatly appreciated if i could get my average in the class.
Dear Student,
You are correct. Your class’s tests were not yet graded when you asked on Monday. They were graded and returned on Wednesday in class. However, you chose to not come to class on Wednesday. Your test, along with those of the other students who were not in class, is in my office.
It is Friday night, I am at home, and I am not going back to my office until Monday. I do not have a copy of my gradebook at home, nor do I memorize each student’s test grade as I enter them. Therefore, I will not be able to inform you of your grade until Monday.
As for giving you your average in the class, there is no such thing as an “average” in my classes. Your grade is calculated with a rather complex formula which weights assignments, tests, and the final exam differently, and at this point would only tell you your grade for the class if you made a zero on the final.
Rather than worry about “how much you need to get on the final,” I suggest you worry about making sure you have completely mastered the material that will be on the final exam. That way, you can ensure that if it is mathematically possible for you to earn a grade of 90 or above in the class, you will do so.
Sincerely,
Your Professor
& Being a Polymath">Branding & Being a Polymath
November 17, 2009 in Business, Cat Comments, Lampworking & Glass, Rantings by Julia | No comments
My business partner Andrea commented on Twitter this week that
She’s not alone — I could almost have written that tweet, though mine would have said “I tweet about rescue cats, computing, lampwork and jewelry, bellydancing, chainmaille, and teaching.” The same thing is true of my blogging, as you know if you read Art of the Firebird regularly. I blog and Tweet and post about whatever I damn well please, which means I may focus on beads one day, cats the next, and my sore abs the third.
Of course, this goes against everything you see from the self-proclaimed “social media experts” who state that your Brand must be tightly focused and contain nothing extraneous or unrelated to your major product. By this theory, my blog/website/Twitter/Facebook should be focused only on my lampworking/jewelry business because everything else confuses my branding. I should have another set of accounts for animal rescue, and yet another for teaching matters (okay, I DO have a separate web site for the teaching, but still…).
I suspect that the people who say this either a) don’t have a real life into which they fit social media and marketing, or b) have no clue about being a Polymath (or, as Barbara Sher terms them, a Scanner). It’s just not realistic to manage multiple blogs or social media accounts for different things. There’s the time factor, of course, but there’s also the “keeping things straight” factor. Sure as anything I’d mis-post half of what I write to the wrong place.
I’m NOT only a lampwork glass artist, or a chainmailler, or an animal rescue activist, or a computer scientist, or a professor, or anything else. I’m all of these, and more. If I limit my postings to only one aspect, that isn’t the true me. Any polymath will tell you that we can’t be limited to one thing — even my brother the social media maven doesn’t manage to limit his Twitter and Facebook to one focus!
In truth my “Brand” is ME, ALL of me, and that’s what my blog, and my Twitter account, and my Facebook account, reflect. So SEO/marketing/branding rules be damned, I’m branding the Polymathic Me, all of her, because that’s what makes me unique!