Professor Tells Student to “get your shit together” | Hacker News Reader

Professor Tells Student to “get your shit together”

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46 pointsjennyjenjen43 comments

That's definitely good advice at the end, but I think that the professor's response is pretty disproportionate.

Presumably, it was a much ruder interruption to the class to stop everything and publicly humiliate a student whom he felt disrespected by. And it's extremely rude to take a personal email and forward it to the entire class (who presumably would be able to recognize the student).

Maybe the intent was to "smack some sense" into a student for their own benefit, but that's really presuming a lot about a person from a handful of data points.

Also, how likely is this to be BS?

A professor forwarding an email they received from a student into a public or semi-public forum, especially with negative intent, isn't even legal in many countries. The rules aren't quite as strict as attorney-client privilege, but there are still restrictions on disclosing information about student performance that you receive in the course of your duties (with "performance" generally including behavioral issues). In the U.S., it's arguably a FERPA violation to do so. Whether X'ing the name out is sufficient to avoid the issue, I don't know. I wouldn't risk it myself.

If something comes up in class, on the other hand, it's generally okay to address it in class, since it was already raised in that venue; you can scold a student who creates a disruption in class. But forwarding an email that was sent specifically to you (not to a class listserv) to the entire class is a bit different.

> In the U.S., it's arguably a FERPA violation to do so.

Not if, as in this case, the student's identity is concealed. In such a case, it becomes as valid an instructional element as a psychological case history (where the subject's identity is always concealed).

It's true that psychological case histories are published, but much more carefully. You need to make a formal proposal to an independent review board, which will assess your proposed anonymization protocol and the circumstances of data collection and disclosure. The bar is particularly high if you're asking to release a case study where you don't have documentation of the subject's consent (even for anonymized case studies).

> It's true that psychological case histories are published, but much more carefully.

Yes, that's increasingly true as time passes. Freud's case histories were marked with the subject's real initials, and this practice continued up to the 1950s. I'm not excusing, just explaining.

Even in modern times, very detailed case histories are published as long as there's no credible risk of associating the study with a particular individual, or consent is obtained from someone able to give informed consent.

While I agree with the subject of the response, I disagree with your interpretation of FERPA. Any student who was in that class would have a clear, unambiguous knowledge of the student's identity, and mere 'xxx'ing of the name is a cursory, even illusory attempt at maintaining privacy.

Yes, true but from the standpoint of the public, the professor's action was well-advised. A claim of libel would require that the student's identity become public knowledge, something the obfuscation prevented.

I'm speaking about the general issue of a potential libel action and invasion of privacy, not specifically about FERPA.

Check out his twitter feed: https://twitter.com/profgalloway

Looks like people still contact him about it.

> Presumably, it was a much ruder interruption to the class to stop everything and publicly humiliate a student whom he felt disrespected by.

Not at the beginning of the school semester, when what is and is not tolerated is more likely to create an indelible impression. The professor's behavior had a point -- to mark unacceptable behavior as such, in a way that everyone would get the message.

> Also, how likely is this to be BS?

That's always a risk in online postings. But even if it's fictional, it rings true.

Additionally, here's the "Default Policies for Stern Courses" page on the school's site:

"Arriving Late, Leaving Early, Coming & Going

"Students are expected to arrive to class on time and stay to the end of the class period.

"Arriving late or leaving class early will have impact on the course grade.

"Students may enter class late only if given permission by the instructor and can do so without disrupting the class.

"(Note that instructors are not obliged to admit late students or readmit students who leave class or may choose to admit them only at specific times.)"

http://www.stern.nyu.edu/AcademicAffairs/Policies/GeneralPol...

Professor Galloway might be advised to also get his shit together and/or remove the stick from his ass. Rather than say: "This is a suboptimal situation, how can we fix it?", he simply called the student immature and disrespectful, and never acknowledged the possibility that he, or some institution he has influence over, might be partially at fault in the matter.

Masters/professional degrees are hardly an "academic pursuit". Universities treat them as a profit-generating device, and as such, it's reasonable that the customer be able to make an informed decision. In relatively short professional-degree programs, you will often have only one chance to take a given elective during your time there. Sometimes you have to make a decision between these courses. In my Masters program, I made the wrong decision regarding electives more than once, missed out on some very interesting courses, and wasted my time with some absolutely lousy ones.

In an ideal world, the school would provide some reasonable solution for this. Either by having some reasonable culture of course-sampling, or if they feel that harmful, offer videos that allow students to, on their own time, sample the course and make an informed decision as to whether the course is worth their limited resources.

> he simply called the student immature and disrespectful

Which he/she were.

> [I] missed out on some very interesting courses, and wasted my time with some absolutely lousy ones

Again, this is not a problem of the University. Ideally, you would have already researched the electives in detail and chosen the one you thought best. If you thought wrong, it's personal.

> he, or some institution he has influence over, might be partially at fault in the matter

It doesn't matter. When you go to a university, you enter into a contract and agree to several terms and conditions. If they are not met, the consequences will be faced. Arguing against is a waste of time.

> the school would provide some reasonable solution for this

Why? All the professor asked the student was to attend the next class due to tardiness. The student decided to complain about it; which was a foolish decision. It's compounded by the fact that shit happens; if you can't handle the consequences then you're not fit for life. There was no reason to email the teacher, and the punishment was rightly deserved.

>if you can't handle the consequences then you're not fit for life

This is pretty harsh. If you applied similar harshness to your own actions, do you think you'd approve?

It depends on the action. If I were in the same situation as the student, I might have been slightly annoyed. I might even have been murderous.

But I would calm down after 15 minutes and realize he was right.

It always happens with my instructors.

I would. I hold no one else up to a bar higher than I hold myself. And I set the bar high. I've got no time for whiners and losers and this student's behavior is beyond the pale.

I think it would have been fair for Prof. Galloway to reply, "I understand my policy inconvenienced you, but it is my policy for a very good reason, and I'm not changing it."

There's an interesting clash here between the view of students as supplicants receiving the privilege of an education, and the view of them that you suggest, which is as consumers paying for a service. I think there's some truth in both perspectives.

I definitely agree, though, that the school should get out in front of this. If students really have so little information on which to make irreversible course choices, that seems like a problem to me. Your video suggestion is an excellent one.

Or how about the student can sit through the whole class to sample it? That's what I did. I got to sample pretty much everything. And I didn't need to traipse out to another subject after 30 minutes - I could just go to the next full lecture of the second subject.

Which works fine for undergraduate courses that meet for three one-hour weekly sessions. This doesn't really work when you are trying to choose between 3 conflicting options that meet for one three-hour session a week all at the same time, as is often the case with MBA/MPP programs.

You assume I was referring to undergrad class?

In my experience most lectures are closer to 1 hour than 3. For BS, MS, even PhD.

Do I understand you correctly that MBA classes are particularly freakishly timetabled?

This really just seems like a culture-clash in action.

I don't know what the general sentiment is at NYU, but the university I attended had a very strong "shopping week" culture. It was quite common, and quite accepted, to shop three classes simultaneously, spending 20-30 minutes at each one and leaving or joining midway through the class.

In that context, xxxx's only real faux pas was sending the email, which was perhaps a hair self-important.

I'd love to hear from an NYU student what the social mores there are.

I agree, this would not be too out of the ordinary at my institution; although I usually would take the approach of going to a different class each day for the first week of classes.

Great advice from the professor. "Get the easy stuff right."

Yep. It's amazing how much that can hobble you--it seems like while the big stuff is what takes the most effort, the little stuff is what causes you to lose.

A simple example: Say I want to go out on a date. I worry about meeting people, I worry about being in shape, I worry about being interesting, I worry about all kinds of stuff--but the simple thing is having clean laundry. It's a simple thing to tick off, but it can render all of the other work useless if it isn't done.

Nothing mean about it. Very well-written and good advice, it is.

I agree. That's the take the author decided to use when naming the article.

Yeah, this seems like a case of grandstanding. Everyone who agrees with the professor can get on their high horse about decorum. Unfortunately for the lesson, responsible, mature adults don't publicly humiliate those less worldly and wise than they are. That's what assholes do.

So if anything the life lesson here is: wisdom is an excuse to lord it over other people. Score points whenever you can as publicly as possible.

While I initially sided with the professor (especially seeing the department's policies for class attendance), I see what you're saying and agree that public humiliation is more on the side of assholery, if you will. I guess perhaps I meet halfway between agreeing with this professor and agreeing with you; where the student really went wrong was with e-mailing the teacher in this manner, and perhaps that's why the professor responded with such a strong reaction (and forwarded it on to other students).

I will absolutely disagree, though, that it's a "worldly and wise" thing to understand and know class policy. He's chewing him/her out over established, known policies. In the "real world" - or whatever you'd like to call it - I, nor you, really expect people to need to have their hands held about simple policies, do we?

Lots of professors are assholes. Some are good people. Some are jackasses who've never set foot in the real world and humiliate 18-22 year olds just because they get their rocks off on it.

My initial reaction to this was: "Yep, glad to see one of those self-entitled students get called out for his disrespectful behaviour by a Professor." But then I started thinking about the way my Professors in college had behaved about this (I went to a university that's regularly ranked among the top ten in the States.)

At least in undergrad, specially in massive classes where there are sometimes 100+ students in attendace -- there was little or no backlash against 'dropping in' to a class late. The only condition stipulated by many of my professors was, "Don't ask for permission to come in and disturb the whole class." Even in grad school, the only downside to coming in late was that you would miss very important material.

Nevertheless, none of my professors have (thankfully) thrown me out of class for coming in later than they expected. Students, especially those in the hard sciences and engineering live a fairly stressful lifestyle, with little opportunity for recreation and a nutritious diet. They should be forgiven for slipping up once in a while, whatever the reason ("Shopping around" or just plain "I woke up late because I was up all night doing that assignment")

The best way to teach humility is to demonstrate it. This professor has instead demonstrated his egoism through this email and through his decision to distribute it to the entire class. It seems this professor is the kind of person who demands respect but is not willing to give it (or rather, chooses who to give it to based on his own set of criteria for who is deserving - hardly humble).

He discusses the incident here: http://bigthink.com/users/scottgalloway

Why does a student need to attend the first lecture (which will likely consist of administrative matters and rule-setting) to get an idea if they want to take the class? I thought this is why professors listed their syllabi on their webpage.

Right? I was in school just as things were becoming more digitized, but we had to flip through books to see class descriptions or wait until the day we registered to get any idea of a description. Sometimes that info was pretty far off or not even included.

It looks a little easier nowadays, but I'm sure everyone says that of younger generations. My brother is in his last semester of school and it's all at his fingertips before school starts. He does a thorough job of finding classes he's interested in, what fits in his schedule, and what he needs to complete to graduate. I asked him about his process once, out of curiosity, and he said that he does his research by asking me and others who have somewhat recent academic experience, then he searches old websites or lecturers' websites for old an old syllabus.

After a quick scan of the Stern college at NYC, it seems that information about courses are highly accessible. There seems no reason to have to visit the classes one by one. I'd take this professor's class without visiting one before - looks awesome!

While most of what the professor says is true, the anger underlying that letter indicates to me that he has bigger issues to fix than young, overly eager and self-centered student who comes late to class on the first day and writes a polite but misguided letter to the professor who embarrassed her publicly.

I don't even understand his position? Why should it be disrespectful? She didn't came late to an appointment, she didnt' disturbed the class by arriving shortly after the beginning, she arrived simply an hour later to an open event (kind of). That is not disrespectful where i come from.

This person did not arrive "simply" an hour later and not to an "open event." Read the general policies of the Stern School of Business, which cover the course in question:

http://www.stern.nyu.edu/AcademicAffairs/Policies/GeneralPol...

A good rule of thumb for determining overreaction is who swears first. The student may have felt entitled to try out multiple classes and come in late, but the professor felt entitled to make a private matter public, public shame her.

I feel sorry for the student. This is going to be another of those "someone makes a dumb faux pas" stories that's copy-pasted all over the internet for everyone to jump on their high horse about.

I actually don't feel sorry for the student. I wish I'd had a professor smack some sense into me earlier. For me, it took a tough supervisor a few years out of school to get the message through. The sad part is that I had it together better than many others I've met even then.

I think the point is that there's a less disrespectful way of finding out which class you should take ie. talking to other students, online research, reading course descriptions, etc.

Of course we don't have context, but walking into a class an hour in seems like it's fairly presumptuous.

That's my effort at high horse-ness :ob

Getting your dumb faux pas chewed out in such a manner is a great thing - you get the learning experience, but you don't get the ugly consequences that often come with that; i.e., this anonymous posting vs. a public failure that will stay on your record forever, a firing from a job or a break in important personal relationship. And, by the way, all these three things were quite likely with the 'default behaviour' that the student showed, and hopefully this event will allow him/her to achieve better results in future.

Didn't we have a situation a few weeks ago where the major iaaue was the use of public shaming? Did the professor com incubate with the student privately? I assume the student released the email in an attempt to public ally shame the professor. Student -2, professor -1. Now can we all grow up now and try to minimally maintain scores of 0?

I hope he gets sued.

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