THAT Student

I got an email from one of my advisees today, one who's pretty much that student.  By "that student," I mean the sort of student who isn't horrible, but who's an energy sap, who always wants some special thing done, but who, at the same time, does minimal work with minimal (apparent) effort, and doesn't seem to care much, that is, until zie needs that some special thing, and then it's all about hir.

We have this requirement, a sort of outcome based requirement where students are supposed to figure out the outcome they want, and then do something, and then demonstrate that they've achieved the outcome.  Most of our students just do it.  Some do it in extraordinary ways.  Most do it, and they learn something, and it's done.  But not my special student.  Zie wants to designate something zie did a while back for the requirement, and then do the paperwork backwards, I think.  I don't know if the office of the special requirement will allow that.

And then zie has another graduation requirement problem.  That's mostly what zie emailed me about today.  So I looked in hir folder, and lo and behold, in my advising notes, I have that specific issue at the top of the page as one of three things zie needed to take care of.  But I think zie is going to try to blame me, or some other advising person, or graduation requirement person.

And yet, if zie weren't the sort of person who does the minimal for everything, there'd be no problem.  This just isn't the sort of graduation requirement that most students ever even notice because they fill it without thinking about it, just by doing more than the minimum.