And you thought being a student was hard...

Before my time as a Communication professor at Ivy Tech, I spent many years doing corporate and organizational training. When I decided to become an instructor, I thought it couldn't be much different from what I did for companies. Boy, I couldn't be more wrong! Although I'd never tell my students, I learn more from them than they will ever learn from me!

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

It's Finally Finals!

Ugh, this week could not get here soon enough! I've taken an informal poll of all my colleagues that I associate on a regular basis, and we all agree - this semester SUCKED.

Part of the problem for us was the explosion of enrollment with very few new hires. Many of us were maxed out of overload. Top that with raised class limits (a particular pet peeve of mine due to limited interpersonal interaction and no additional money for additional students), more rules and regulations coming down the administrative pipe that allows us less and less freedom in our classes, and a raise freeze due to lack of funding, and it makes for a cranky group of people. We were told that this semester would be the worst, by next semester, many of the issues we had with this semester will have been worked out. Needless to say, none of us are holding our breath.

On the positive teaching side of things, this is group project and individual presentation week for all of my students. They do their final online to give us time to do these presentations. I have to say, this has got to be my favorite of all assignments! I require creativity as the majority of their grade, and what they end up coming up with blows me away every semester. Oh, sure, there's always a few that barely put in enough time to throw a Power Point presentation together, but then there are those who are so rich and complicated and entertaining that I end up keeping them as examples for the next semester. This semester, I had a group who did a Dateline Undercover-type project, sending two gals into Best Buy, one looking hot, the other looking kinda scruffy, to see who was helped first. Needless to say, the hot gal was helped first. In fact, the sales clerk closest to the scruffy student walked by her and ignored her completely to go help the cute student. I smell an expose here!

My media class also had some great projects. They had to do a presentation on the marketing and advertising campaign on a product and how that related to culture and communication. One student did Gatorade and emotional communication. I was floored. It was so well researched, so outside of the box, with just enough imperfections that I didn't suspect plaigarism, she got the highest grade in the class for that project.

It is just these things that make all of the other crap that has to be dealt with so much easier. If only there were more moments like these.

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