Students – who needs them?

I love my job.  There are times when I really can’t stand it, but those are on the few and far days in between when I’m pretty much having a crap day in general.  But overall I love my job.  I work in a college where I teach Multimedia, in particular I teach Dreamweaver, and HTML and CSS.  Three of the things that I love.  I love coding and sitting there nutting out a problem.  I don’t do as much of it for myself as I used to because I’m always teaching students how to do it so at the end of the day I sometimes just don’t feel like doing anything for myself.  But yeah – I love my job.

We have two classes going at the moment.  A Certificate III course and a Certificate IV course, both in Multimedia.  So you would think that students who come to do this course would want to learn about the field that they have chosen to study and would like careers in.  But NO.  They just gripe and gripe about the work that they have to do.  And then they tell us it’s boring.  Well I’m sorry, you’re right, HTML is not the sexiest subject you can do, but you CHOSE to do it, so buck up little boy and do the bloody work.

So you might be wondering why I’m telling you this?  The year is winding up for us here in Australia.  Our class years go from January to December, so pretty much all the work has to be handed in NOW to be able to pass by the end of the year.  At the end of last term the students were given an assignment to do on blogging.  (Yes we teach our students about blogging – mostly blogging for a business, but blogging in general – my part is in how to set up a WordPress layout and re-design and code it fun fun fun)  Did you think that the students enjoyed it?  No, it was too hard for them they said.  Blogging is boring, we’re never going to use it again blah blah blahdiblah.  I seriously got to the point where I just wanted to grab them and throttle them.  After a year of them complaining about the stuff they had to learn it was just one more thing to push me over the edge.

So I’m marking their assignments today.  And sadly they passed – all of them.  But some of them with just a bare pass.  And only because technically they have all the requirements.  If I could be marking them on attitude they would all have failed with a big resounding F A I L.  I’m sorry to have had to share that with you all, but I needed to vent.  Seeing as how I’m not allowed to vent at them.  Ungrateful little sods, who shall probably remain unemployed or go to further study in some other field where they can hassle some other lecturer about things they don’t want to learn (as if they have a choice?).  Good luck to you all I wish you all the failure in the world!  Except to the odd one here and there and you know who you are.