Writing Written Off

Busy day.  Was in court this morning (traffic court, got good plea bargain for my client).  Got to campus in time to teach my courses.

Some of the courses I teach are designated as "Writing-Intensive" courses in the College's "Writing Across the Curriculum" program.  As the name implies, this means that students are expected to do a significant amount of writing as part of their coursework.  The course numbers for the "Writing-Intensive" courses in the WAC program all have a "W" suffix to the course number.

Simple enough!  Straightforward enough!  Should not be susceptible to any ambiguities!

So today, I had a student ask me what the Midterm Exam would be like.  I told this student that it would be all essays.  The student then started whining to me about how he preferred the true-false and multiple choice type exams.  I responded that I, too, preferred the T/F and multiple choice exams because they were easier to grade, what with the Scantron forms and machines.

The student (American-born, I might add) then whined that he had enough writing to do anyway.

I know that I speak on behalf of just about every professor in every college in America when I say the following:

Read the official description of the Course in the College Catalog.  The official description means what is says.  Read the Course Syllabus!  The Course Syllabus means what it says!  And if you are not prepared to do all of the work as described in the Catalog or Syllabus, then do us each a favor and drop the Course!