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The First Day

Mike Barry

    “Damn!” Jim thought as the alarm jarred him awake. “I’d much rather wake up a few minutes before the alarm.” He swung his legs out of bed and got ready to face his 29^th first day of school. Jim had taken the last few weeks of the summer off. After 28 years in academia – the only job he’s ever had as an adult – he had pretty much taken for granted being able to take that much time off in one fell swoop.
    Over coffee, he mentally gathered himself for the day. He faced the usual first day of classes routine: get to the office, make sure the syllabus was photocopied, go over the students’ pictures from the campus intranet so he’d at least know a few of their names early on and wonder how many would be awake for his 10:00 class. It still amazed him how many students think that’s an early time to have class. Time to dust off the usual “If you get a job when 10:00 is an early start, let me know and I’ll send my resume along” line. He has a couple of sections of Introduction to Physics this time around, so he doesn’t know anyone in the class from previous courses.
    Not quite being in the swing of things yet, Jim left home a few minutes later than usual. That being the case, he missed pretty much every traffic light getting to the main parking garage. Teaching at a moderate-sized private school, he had about a 10 minute trudge from the garage to his building. He gathered his mail, put his lunch in the department fridge, grabbed another cup of coffee and went to his office. He always allows himself plenty of time to get ready for the upcoming day.
    He spent the requisite two minutes skimming his lecture notes to make sure he had everything straight for class, then reviewed the syllabus one last time. He grabbed the printout of his two sections worth of pictures. About 40 per section, so a bit of work to do to get their names and faces by the first midterm, he figured. As he scanned the pictures, he started to wonder who the problem children would be. He and his colleagues call them PITA’s, for Pains in the Ass. Most of his students are fine people, he knew, and even put in a reasonable effort, but the ones who drive him to drink are easier to remember.
    He noticed that the backup quarterback is in the class. He remembered a few years ago having the starting tailback. One of the tailback’s biggest faults was that his IQ resembled his uniform number. A 4.40 time in the 40 makes up for a few points on the SAT, however. Sadly, his GPA more closely resembled a 1.40 and that was with pressure from above to pass him. The school needed him for the bowl game that year. Jim’s school went to a bowl game almost every year, but it was always a game that was on ESPN2 at an odd time, where the school lost money after revenue sharing with the conference and eating unsold tickets. What made it even worse was the tailback knew all this was going on and just didn’t give a shit about his academics anyway. Jim crossed his fingers that the backup quarterback would be less of a problem, but he wasn’t counting on anything.
    He noted that an email had just hit his account. From a parent of one of his students. “Just great,” he grumbled. “I haven’t even met the kid yet and the parent is already telling me how the kid HAS to get an A in the course so he (as it turns out) can go to the right graduate school.” The kids with helicopter parents were no fun to deal with. They can’t decide what socks to wear without parental approval, but they still want the high grade and have the next 20 years of their lives planned. Most students’ planning consisted of how they were going to get laid Thursday night, but these kids went way too far the other way.
    As he continued to look at the pictures, one name seemed to ring a bell. “Not a sibling of a former student,” Jim realized, “but his mother is an alum who’s the CEO of a mid-sized company.” That’s the perfect storm he knew. Mom’s an alum, a big donor, and a heavy hitter in industry. That means the kid probably took the short bus to school. Jim really didn’t look forward to grading the kid’s first midterm. Jim muttered, “That’s the thing about intro physics – it’s quantitative. There’s one correct answer. Mine. No one gives a shit how you feel when you’re crunching numbers.” Yeah, that’ll really help when the kid whines about his grade. “Could be worse,” Jim thought. “The kid could be the son of a board member.” Which brought Jim to the next name. “Oh no...”
    “On to the next page of pix. That should be fun. At some point, I should just make like a French soldier and surrender,” Jim figured. Which is pretty much what happened when he saw the next name. It was the son of Jim’s colleague on the other side of the building. “Beth is a nice enough person,” Jim thought, but then realized that most children of faculty were at least 20 IQ points under their parents. Recessive genes? A slow-witted milkman? Jim couldn’t explain it. His last faculty member’s kid got a D- as a Christmas present. Dad wasn’t amused. Neither was Jim. The kid did very little all semester. Jim told him if he passed the final, he’d pass the course. He got a 69. Somehow, it seemed an appropriate number.
    “What’s next on the hit parade?” Jim asked himself rhetorically. That took 3 names farther down the list. Just the smirk on the picture was enough for Jim. A kid that obviously thinks she’s going to take over the world before she hits 30. Probably inherently lazy and already rehearsing what she’s going to say when The National Science Foundation makes her the inevitable offer. It seemed to Jim that he had at least one of those a semester. The first midterm usually provokes a “WTF?” response.
    Right after that prize-winner came George’s picture. “Wonderful. George the grade-grubber?” Jim asked himself. The grade-grubbers seldom asked for a higher grade because they felt their performances merited it. They just wanted a higher grade. They’ve always gotten them, so why not now? Jim thought of asking his dean for a big raise just because he felt like getting one. Then he pictured the dean’s reaction, going from incredulousness to sheer belly laughter.
    He did a double-take at a picture on the next row. The woman was absolutely gorgeous. He wondered if she suffers from Pretty Girl Syndrome. Those are the ones who seem to get whatever they want just because they’re hot enough to melt lead. There’s an advantage of teaching a quantitative class – the numbers don’t care how beautiful you are. If your number doesn’t match mine, you’re wrong and now it’s just a matter of damage assessment. A lot of those students don’t deal with that well. At all.
    “Somewhere in here is my Story Student,” Jim figured. There’s one in every class. Whenever there’s a deliverable, there’s an excuse why the lab report can’t be handed in on time or why the student just HAS to take the exam at a later time. Jim thought he had figured this out years ago. He always puts on his syllabi that no late assignments will be accepted and that if an exam is missed, the weight will go on the final. He once figured students actually read the syllabus, but now he knew better. “One of the things I least like to do – go over the syllabus on the first day of class,” he groused. He figured about 1 out of 10 students will pay attention. The other 9 will use it as a starting point for negotiation the day before an exam or assignment is due. “Aw shit – I forgot to put the line in about shutting cell phones off before class!” he exclaimed. He figured he’d make a big deal out of it 5 minutes into class, then see if anyone’s phone went off in the intervening hour and a quarter. Even money, it’ll happen. Even the few that do read the damned thing will come in and say “I know the syllabus says...”. To which Jim replies “The next word is ‘but’, isn’t it?” The Story Student will be surprised and say “Yes” and start to explain why their case is ever-so-special so he has to make an exception. It’s a one-sided and brief conversation after that point. For the few times a student misses a final – usually saying they didn’t write the date down correctly even if he wrote the fucking date on the fucking syllabus correctly – he gives a brutal make-up exam and word spreads pretty fast after that. He thought of those students as Skittle-shitting unicorns. They think they’re so precious.
    “Who’s going to be the office hour drain?” Jim asked. He’s always good about keeping office hours and making students feel welcome, but there are always one or two students who figure if they live in his office during the semester, they’ll guarantee themselves a good grade via the suck-up factor. They’re pretty harmless, but if they don’t have any real questions, why come by? Especially when they’re sick. Within 2 days, Jim’ll get the same virus.
    He noted the first midterm exam is just after Columbus Day. “Let’s see. Class is at 10:00. The exam will end at 11:15. The over/under on the first email asking for extra credit will be 11:10 that day,” Jim guesstimated. That’s always fun. Nothing like a student royally screwing up an exam and wanting to do extra (horseshit) work. We’re back to “The syllabus is a contract. It spells out how I determine your grade. I won’t give one student an opportunity that’s not available to the whole class.” Jim could do that spiel in his sleep. Actually, he probably has done that at some point.
    “Who’s the class drunk/stoner going to be this semester?” He usually has a student who confuses a 0.40 blood alcohol level with a 4.0 GPA. What’s a decimal place between friends? Or the student who smokes joints faster than his dean smokes Marlboros. You could set their pants on fire and they still wouldn’t blink.
    “Quarter of 10. Class is about 10 minutes across campus. Time to get off my ever-expanding tush and go,” Jim realized. Off he went. He made it across campus and up a flight of stairs to his classroom and walked in. And gasped. There was the tailback, not the backup quarterback. And the son of the scion of industry from about 10 years ago. And the idiot daughter of his colleague in the physics department from 4 years before that. And so forth. Jim’s heart started racing and he felt short of breath and started to get scared. The slow-witted and fleet-footed tailback said “Don’t worry – you’re not going to die. You already did. Your alarm clock didn’t go off. It was the heart monitor at County General. Welcome to Hell.”

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