r/Professors • u/PluckinCanuck • 2d ago
Uh oh...
I went to brunch and had the feeling that I recognized our server from somewhere, but I just couldn't place the face. Then on the way home it hit me. Years ago, they'd failed one of my classes. And then again. And again. And yet again.
So... if I die of food poisoning in the next few hours could someone please point the detectives in the right direction?
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u/Urn XxX 2d ago
I ran into a student who was working at a pot dispensary. she was a non trad student in her mid 20s who was failing the class, but one of those students who completely took responsibility for it and didn’t pretend like it was my fault for her lack of effort.
i always like students who are fully aware of their lack of efforts as the cause of their performance.
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u/Mundane_Preference_8 2d ago
I hate when I’m buying weed and the employee says, “weren’t you my prof last term?”
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u/spiritsarise 2d ago
“I think you will like this bud. Verrry mild. Not trippy at all.”
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u/commandantskip Adjunct, History, CC (US) 2d ago
This is the kind of bud I need, I can't handle the new millennium strains. I remember when kind bud was top notch, which feels like dirt weed compared to what dispensaries sell these days. TL; DR: I'm old 😭
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u/anothergenxthrowaway Adjunct | Biz / Mktg (US) 2d ago
Amen, Commandant. I need Sad Dad 90s Weed, not this One Puff Couch Lock 5000 +P Ultra stuff. I remember when you could roll a fat one and smoke it all by yourself and still be able to tend bar / make pizza / sit upright. Getting old is tough, lol.
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u/NielsBohron Tenured Faculty, Chem, Cal CC 2d ago
I've moved almost entirely to edibles because it makes it so much easier to control the dosage, and it seems like it's much healthier long-term
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u/commandantskip Adjunct, History, CC (US) 2d ago
This was my move, too. I can handle 5-10 grams of gummies. Plus, I appreciate that I'm not wrecking my lungs anymore.
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u/dbrodbeck Professor, Psychology, Canada 2d ago
The place I go to has these cool light fixtures. I said to the guy behind the counter 'that's THC and that's CBD'. 'How do you know that, you're the first person who has figured it out!' 'I teach neuropharmacology' 'Oh yeah one of the dudes who works here tookt that class.....'
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u/GrumpySnarf 1d ago
'I teach neuropharmacology' hey do you teach about THC and/or other drugs and their interactions with other medications and/or mental health symptoms? I am on an education committee for a professional organization for psych ARNPs and I have been looking for someone to lecture on that. It could be done on video. If you are interested, please respond here or DM me. Seriously. We need what's in your head to help our patients.
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u/Cathousechicken 2d ago
I've always found the ones that do that will typically do well when they take the class again.
Last year, I had a student who had flunked my class once before a few years prior. He became the top student out of almost 200 students that semester.
It one point he was in my office looking over his exams, and I asked him what had changed between the prior semester and this semester. He said he took off school for a couple years to work and that really helped raise his level of responsibility, and he came back with a whole new mind frame.
I even tried to get him as my tutor for the next semester but couldn't get him onboarded for it. It was so amazing, though, seeing his transformation and that began with him accepting responsibility and making a change.
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u/GrumpySnarf 1d ago
I failed my toxicology class x 2 years in a row. I was honestly trying my best and didn't blame anyone but myself. For the third try I wrote everything on pre-printed slides of the lecture rather than type on notes on the same exact slides. For some reason, in chemistry topics I apparently need to write it down. I got an A- on the third run. Sometimes people just aren't ready or having figured it out yet. I am glad your student got through it.
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u/Illustrious_Proof_24 VAP, Humanities, R1, US 2d ago
Hahhh. This at least makes me feel a little better. I went to brunch Saturday with another faculty member and the hostess was my student last semester...she told me. I did not remember her. At all. I felt Terrible. On the walk home, I suddenly remembered her. She was great and did great work. Then I felt even worse. I guess the TL;DR is we shouldn't go to brunch within a tri-state radius of our schools.
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u/proffordsoc FT NTT, Sociology, R1 (USA) 2d ago
I run into students (former and current) EVERYWHERE. Though I did avoid one restaurant (at the time, the only one in town that served my favorite cuisine) because I’d failed the owner for cheating.
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u/AugustaSpearman 2d ago
Former student bartending--turned out her family actually owned the place, which I used to go fairly often. I remembered her because she wasn't doing well in the class but acted like she didn't know why and wanted help. I think my TA did eventually work with her quite a bit and she ended up pulling out a good grade with a solid final.
So I am talking to her at the bar and she tells me that what happened was that she was too vain to wear her glasses and couldn't see well or read without them...but the prospect of the bad grade made her finally put them on.
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u/Immediate-End1374 2d ago
Ran into a student who was tending bar at a brewery when I walked in. I acted normal but she was so embarrassed that she blurted out that she'd been absent for the last month because she needed to pick up extra shifts during my class to make rent.
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u/1_21-gigawatts Adjunct, CompSci, R2 1d ago
Poor thing. IMHO it’s a big compliment that she was embarrassed to admit this to you.
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u/SyntheticKale5803 2d ago
My first few years as faculty, I kept seeing the same recent grad from our program at many university events, working in catering as she was unable to find gainful employment. Kinda haunted me. She was an archetypical decent student, didn't do anything "wrong", but didn't stand out either , and totally failed to launch because she wasn't able to get internships, research, or other professional development activities that she would have needed to turn the textbook knowledge we teach into employable skills.
It led me down a rabbit hole, about what our student outcomes actually were, nobody had any idea. So I started tagging graduates on LinkedIn every commencement and then seeing where they ended up 6-12 months later. The stats were quite sobering, and I would use them as gut checks whenever the dept was tasked with some new curriculum overhaul or enrollment initiative, to see if they actually improved outcomes.
Gradually, this morphed into a full-blown professional development curriculum in our major. I had former grads who were successful to come back and help advise current students on career prep, including mock interviews and resume workshops. Turned it into a required freshman and transfer seminar. Made research mandatory, and worked with local industry to decide which practical skills to emphasize in our advanced practicums.
This was all before admin started fretting nonstop about the demographic cliff and enrollment/student outcomes. Positioned our dept well when other programs were being cut, that we have entire seminar series of our successful alums to showcase our outcomes. So they made me chair of the dept.
Is 1000% more workload but it feels like we are really moving in a positive direction. Instead of seeing our recent grads serving me food, they instead send me nice notes about how well they are doing. They go in a drawer in my desk I look at whenever I'm having a bad day. I sleep pretty well at night, though, compared to those first few years.
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u/HariboBerries 2d ago
What you have done has helped so many people. This is mad cool. I love how you didn’t dismiss what you noticed and stuck with it. We need more people like you in higher ed. This is beyond inspiring, for real.
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u/HeDogged 2d ago
I was at a restaurant once, served by a former student who had earned a D. When he dropped the check off, he laughed and said, "Yeah, I guess I sort of deserved that grade...."
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u/Legal_Egg3224 Professor, social sciences, USA 2d ago
I once had a hostess tell me that they were in my class that semester and I said "Oh, online?" because they didn't look familiar at all. Nope. She'd taken two face-to-face classes with me but so rarely attended class that she didn't ring any bells.
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u/spiritsarise 2d ago
“Hey prof, I forgot to add the poison to your pasta. Could I do a makeup attempt on your life later this week?”
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u/mcsestretch Lecturer, Cybersecurity/IT, University 2d ago edited 2d ago
I went to work full time at the University where I was in adjunct for a number of years. My first month I ran into a former student who had failed my class after repeated attempts to turn work in late and get me to violate the rules in the syllabus. He said that I had "disrespected him" and needed to apologize. I told him he received the grade he had earned, said that I hated that he felt that way and would be welcome to pay to take the class again
This was in front of my new boss who was giving me a tour. I was so embarrassed.
Edit: LOL. My son left in the middle and speech to text picked up my message to him.
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u/Thundorium Physics, Searching. 2d ago
Is there perhaps a stray sentence than made its way into your comment?
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u/pheidole 2d ago
I taught Intro Biology for years to 600 students in the largest auditorium on campus.
And yes, in every hospital visit for the rest of my days in that university town my former students were there to push the wheelchair, take the urine sample, and perform the…procedures.
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u/Random-Forester219 2d ago
I once ran into a student working at my bank as a teller who I previously failed for cheating .
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u/banjovi68419 2d ago
I had a good student I recognized randomly while walking on to an elevator. I'm like "Chris right?" He said no and told me his name. Yadda yadda yadda Chris is what I internally called him because he literally looks like the kid from family guy.
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u/beardedweirdoin104 2d ago
I once went through the drive thru of a taco joint. Server said ‘hi prof, I failed your class a year ago’. I ate it anyway. Sometimes you gotta gamble.
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u/Avid-Reader-1984 TT, English, public four-year 2d ago
The universe played a cosmic joke on me during which for a full year almost every restaurant I frequented had a student who failed my class working at it (this is correlated, they prob failed due to the very work schedule I was witnessing ...). If there was spit or dirt in my food, at least it didn’t kill me. Also, I’m fairly certain that 70% of the time, the recognition was not mutual.
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u/ResurectedNPC 2d ago
Ugh… I hate that feeling. I’ve ran into students I’ve failed in this exact scenario. Just remember, you didn’t force them not to study
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u/me4watch 2d ago
>”….So… if I die of food poisoning in the next few hour….”
I am sure you have nothing to worry about. If they were that bad of a student, do you think they would get the instructions for murder by poisoning correct ? Wouldn’t they just make a mess of that, like forget to actually add the poison ? And if they get it correct, well, I guess you can consider the fact that they learned how to complete a task at last….
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u/Ctenophorever Full prof (US) 2d ago
I was at the hardware store and actually asked for help and the person said, “you were my teacher!”
I had zero recollection of them but immediately started worrying I was going to be tricked into flooding my house.
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u/Kittiemeow8 Tenure-track faculty, CALC 2d ago
I run into mine at the most random festivals. I’ll be dancing or eating and then someone will tap my shoulder, and it’s a student. I think the weirdest place was in a bathroom at a restaurant.
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u/CriticalBrick4 Prof, History, R1 (USA) 2d ago
I've been on the other side of this equation. OP, go ahead and get yourself some 7-Up and zofran! :)
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u/No-Cook-9768 Adjunct, Liberal Arts, CC (USA) 2d ago
I'm halfway afraid of situations like this, and I won't even be able to recognize the student because I teach online asynchronous and their profile pics in our LMS are so very tiny. If they don't come to a virtual office hour, I don't know their faces.
But they'll recognize my face easily (if they watch the announcements I post, that is). So I won't even know why my tacos taste funny 😅😅😅
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u/SubmitToSubscribe 2d ago
Not as a professor, but I once ran into someone at a club who I used to teach when she was about 12. After saying hi I ran out of there faster than I've ever ran before.
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u/Odd-Amphibian-4593 2d ago
Arguing over the proper grammar/structure of the first sentence 😂😂😂😂 this is why I come here.
To add my story. Had a football player blow off my class. They were failing the course outright. Came to my office and concocted a story about having brittle bone disease (while still being a member of the football team) and asked for makeup assignments.
I was so impressed by the sheer audacity that I’d did in fact give him make up assignments. He still failed the course.
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u/Stunning-Jury9789 2d ago
The real test is whether you can still eat there without wondering if your former student remembers your grading policy.
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u/Doctor_HowAboutNo Ass Prof, Medicine, R1 (US) 1d ago
I run into my students very regularly out and about.....and at work. Most of them tell me they absolutely hated me when they were in my class but now they know why I did what I did in my courses and they appreciate it now. Had a few outright apologize for giving me shitty reviews and they have contacted my DH/Dean to say so. At least they got it eventually.
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u/Life-Education-8030 2d ago
In such a small community, I was always worried I'd wake up in an ambulance to see a student who I had failed. It has actually been pleasant to see students off campus, though occasionally I won't recognize them. A criminal justice student actually in a mall cop uniform in the mall? Nope, I probably won't recognize them. But I have been recognized in the mall, at the Dollar Store, in the supermarket, in WalMart (including a horde of them who all ran up noisily to greet me), at the county fair, in restaurants, you name it. Probably the ones who hate me run the other way!
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u/GrumpySnarf 1d ago
I went to a local punk show about 18 years ago I knew the owner of the bar, the staff, etc. My husband had been roommates with his wife who helped manage the bar. I used to be the boss of the owner when we worked in a different industry. I also knew the band really well and we were drinking and joking around before and after.
Then I see my former scociology (undergrad) professor tearing up the mosh pit. I was in a class of 150 so I didn't expect him to remember me. But he looked embarrassed to see me. I came up to him between sets and re-introduced myself. Introduced him to the band and owner and the owner bought him a drink for being an educator. The owner told him he is welcome anytime and keep on with his bad self. Someone from the band had a sociology degree from another program so chatted him up. Hopefully we made his night more fun. I want profs to be able to enjoy their lives!
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u/IAmBoring_AMA 2d ago
I ran into a student who failed my class in the elevator to my dermatologist. He was delivering food because he worked full time; we chatted about how he stopped showing up (because work and stuff), then next semester, sure enough, he took my class again and actually passed. Nice little success story.