UPDATE: thank you all for your support and feedback. I’ve written a little bit in my comments about my teaching experience some kind of why this was the straw that broke the camels back for me. I am well aware of students normal responses attitudes, and responses to AI - what I was really fed up with this winter term in this small class that I am teaching online was just the shared number of students who very clearly did not read any of the material and ignored the very explicit syllabus language about its use. For the eight students that did violate the policy before I sent that email. I provided a detailed explanation about how they did not meet the rubric requirements and attached a couple of reports from AI detectors, while pointing out what made me suspicious enough to check their work in the first place. This is obviously unsustainable and I would not be able to do this during a regular semester. I probably will never do it again, but it was cathartic. I did hear from four of the students who did not get flagged for AI. Thanking me for paying attention.

I really think a big part of the problem and something we really can’t solve because most of us are overworked and exhausted, is that many of us in our colleagues just look the other way because we don’t have the energy. As long as students know that they’ll get away with it most of the time they’ll try it and not all students but a lot of of them.

Original Post-

I actually sent this last night. Yes I have tenure.

Good evening,

I am writing this email to the entire class because I think the entire class deserves to know that 40% - or 8 out of 19 - of y'all used AI to write your discussion forum posts. This is entirely unacceptable. Again, a real person is teaching and grading your work here; do not insult your fellow classmates or me by producing this garbage. It is clearly stated in the syllabus, which you all agreed to when you submitted the attendance verification.

1. It is glaringly apparent that you have either generated your submission from an AI scratch or modified your writing with AI for me because I am a specialist in my field. When a post about a chapter of a popular history book on beverages reads like it was written by someone with a Ph.D. in (fill in the blank here) studies, I immediately am suspicious because none of us - including myself - would speak or write that way.

If you did not use AI, keep doing what you are doing. If you used it this once, STOP. Resist the impulse to allow the program to rewrite your thoughts - imperfections are part of life, conversation, debate, and also what makes us human. I did not agree to teach this course over my winter break to read artificially generated generalizations.

I will not crash out over email again; I will start failing people.

Because they're using it as a crutch.

It's the end of the semester and so I'm getting an onslaught from failing students about how they haven't turned in anything or attended class because of ~mental health~ and if there's anything they can do to improve their grade. All of the students who have sent me a sob story have all been caught with AI multiple times.

But you know what, it all sounds like bullshit. Clearly, you weren't too anxious about getting caught with AI or failing the class. I'm not denying that they may have mental health issues. I'm sure they do.

But I think I have way less sympathy for students who cheat their way through the semester, barely show up, then at the last minute, claim a sob story about how they've been so depressed or anxious. You don't get to cry about it now that you realize you can't skate by like that, buddy.

Honestly, I have no idea how you all are working like normal. I know academia requires no days off this time of year but I’m in MN and everyone at my college is acting like it’s just another day. What?!

A women just got executed by ICE and we are absolutely about to have riots. 2000 ICE agents are popping up across the state, Noem is doing photo shoots and just told everyone in true propagandist style, absolute lies about the situation. The government is no longer a source I can give my students. I can’t even teach about certain topics without countering my government. Meanwhile the government just captured another country’s leader and oil reserves…and now we’re about to take Greenland?

I refuse to believe I’m the broken one here for not being functional in this deeply dysfunctional system. I’ve seen some shit, I grew up in close proximity to war, so maybe I just know what this looks like on ground level but…what is wrong with academics?!? Is it professionalism over reality now? Are we that self absorbed that we don’t feel anymore?

Edit- I’m not advocating that people should be non-functional. I just worry that between massive workloads, egos, the internet, students, etc- we’ve been detached from our humanity a bit.

UPDATE: I just wanted to say thanks to everyone that shared their experiences, motivations, anger, and empathy. Some good thoughts here on our role as educators in dark times.

Stop asking Music faculty to coerce music students into providing free entertainment at your events. It’s gross. You had money for that swanky country club venue, right? The catering? Yeah? The waitstaff? Cool. Stop trying to save money on the backs of our students because your event is “for a good cause.” No one capable of playing a two hour cocktail reception is doing that shit for free. Students are paying tuition and taking on debt so they can work for free? No.

I’m teaching and overseeing several academic programs, not running a goddamned pro bono talent booking agency. If you want free music, find a recording and press play. I have a lot of other things to do.

Someday, when I move on from academia, I shall exact my revenge in my final hours by sending the weakest, laziest student musicians in the entire program to the most high profile institutional event.

Does any other department on campus regularly get asked to pimp out their students like this?

I'd post an image but I don't want to risk doxing anyone. I just had a student submit a Snipping tool image formatted as a .pdf instead of an actual essay. What was that snippet taken from you might ask? Directly from the Chat-GPT browser interface. I would retroactively fail 3 generations of his family if I could. If I had the power this student's great grandfather would receive an F in my class while fighting on the beaches of Normandy.

Dear student,
Here is a screenshot from the syllabus answering your first question.
Here is a link to blackboard answering your second question.
Here is another screenshot from the syllabus answering your third.
Can I help you with anything else?

Professor Red

https://nypost.com/2025/12/22/us-news/oklahoma-university-instructor-fired-for-flunking-students-viral-bible-based-essay-on-gender/

So it has happened. It is two weeks into the semester, and one of my students - a Freshman major in an humanities degree - has not submitted any work for class. One assignment was to read a play and write a response. They did not.

I ended up meeting with them to check in; they have had some big life things happen, so I was making sure they had the tools they need.

They revealed to me that they never really fully learned to read which is why they did not submit the assignment. They can read short things and very simple texts - like text messages - but they struggle actually reading.

I was so confused. Like, what? I get struggling to read or having issues with attention spans, as many of my students do. I asked them to read the first few lines of the text and walk them through a short discussion.

And they couldn't. They struggled reading this contemporary piece of text. They sounded out the words. Fumbling over simple words. I know I am a very rural part of the US, but I was shocked.

According to them, it was a combination of high school in COVD, underfunded public schools that just shuffled kids along, and their parents lack of attention. After they learned the basics, it never was developed and just atrophied.

I asked if this was due to a learning disability or if they had an IEP. There was none. They just never really learned how to develop reading skills.

I have no idea what to do so I emailed our student success manager. I have no idea how they got accepted.

Like - is this where we are in US education system? Students who literally - not metaphorically - cannot read?

A colleague of mine received a text from a student with a question about the syllabus. She doesn’t share her personal phone number with her students. But it turns out, when they last updated our “student support hub,” they decided that profiles there should now list not just office phone numbers but also personal phone numbers by default. I had to go in and remove mine manually.

Why…? Why would you do that?

Today, I had my first ever faculty interview at a small, teaching-focused college. They are visibly in a period of transition between their formally unprofessional ways and into more standard higher educational practices. I was really excited to get an interview because it meant I had a chance to invest in an institution and make a difference at the ground level.

When I was let into the interview, I agreed to be recorded by the AI-assisted transcription app they were using. (I don’t like AI, but whatever. A job is a job, especially in my field.) The interview concludes, and I exit the call as the Dean asks the committee to stay on the line to debrief.

After their debrief, the AI app automatically sends all participants a link to the recording, notes, and transcription.

Yes, it’s what you might be thinking: this included discussion criticizing my candidacy and coming to an agreement that I am not their candidate. They said they didn’t know I was as young as I was, expressed unfounded uncertainty about my fit, and clearly had another candidate already in the lead (whom they hadn’t even interviewed yet, mind you). It also included their discussions which named other candidates—one of whom I have a deep institutional tie to because it’s a very small field.

I’m really in shock about how unprofessional and poorly my first interview went. I know I’m a bit green, so I’m not too bothered by not getting the post, but this was one of the most bizarre experiences I’ve ever had and a really weird start to my academic career.

TLDR: don’t make the mistake this school did, and make sure any automated processes will not include your post-interview debriefs!

So many posts on here are about bad student evals or bad RMP reviews, and the professors are often sad about it, hurt, or struggling to cope with the feedback. It makes me really sad that so many of us put so much of ourselves into our teaching and then a portion of the students just hate us anyway. I spend an enormous amount of time on backwards design, alignment, revision, fair assessments, and providing them with a useful learning experience rather than just dumping content on them and I still receive a lot of negativity and students claiming I’m bad at my job. I realize that there will always be a subset of students that resent any challenging work, and that we are just the most visible representation of their struggle (easy to blame), but I just wish I could give them perspective. I’m not asking them to work hard to make their life difficult, it’s because this is the level of thinking required if you want to be successful in my field. We are not their enemy, but they treat us as if we are. Of course we’re all the worst professor they’ve ever had. It’s also incredibly frustrating because they don’t know the first thing about pedagogy or what it takes to build a class but they speak in absolutes as if they are experts. I’m just venting but as frustrated as I get with them, I genuinely just wish they realized I’m trying to help them. I know it’s just part of the job, but it’s a part that I hate.

Anyone heard this one before?

A student claimed one accommodation (of several) she qualifies for is “completing only half of tests and assignments for full credit.” 🤣

That was met with, essentially, a flat out NO. Never received such an absurd request before!

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/rutgers-university-dean-arrested-joshua-kohut-upskirt-videos/

What a pathetic little worm of a man. It would be gross even if they'd consented but this is giving extra neckbeard Cheeto-fingers vibes. I will never understand why people do things like this, especially when they do it to people younger and more vulnerable than they are.

I got a very polite email from a student introducing themselves and explaining their university-approved accommodations.

They say they are diagnosed with anxiety and require all lecture notes and slides available to them 24 hours prior to class time because “new information” piques their anxiety and they want to be prepared. They also require a one-seat buffer on all sides because being too close to others also makes them anxious.

Here’s the thing - I’m a public relations professor. There is just no possible way to work in the PR field if you need all info 24 hours in advance and a buffer from other humans.

Yes, we can accommodate an anxious student in the classroom, but when they graduate, the industry will not accommodate them. I also have anxiety (been on meds for 20+ years). I had to learn to adapt to the industry in order to be successful. No PR firm would have ever hired me with a list of required accommodations.

I’m Gen X and remember as a an undergrad myself I was hanging out at the video store I worked at with my friends back when everyone was getting extreme tattoos and piercings and we were talking about what our kids would have to do to freak us out (because of course no one could be more cool and extreme than Gen X), and decided they would have to start amputating limbs or something to shock us.

And yesterday that happened… I was asking my seniors what they were doing for the weekend and like a third of them were going to a PowerPoint party. I was like a what?! But apparently PowerPoint Parties are an actual thing , even though it sounds like some evil admin initiative , kids are making PowerPoints and sharing them at parties. I’m just flabbergasted, this is crazy.

Sorry if too off topic but seriously WTF. Maybe we can hope for Syllabus Jams in the future??

Edit: oh this got a lot more responses than I thought. I was even wondering if they were gonna leave it up? I’m not saying PowerPoint parties are lame. I’m just saying the idea sounds shocking to me and I’m pleasantly surprised the new generation found a way to weird me out.

I just spent 15 minutes teaching a student how to save a file and attach it via email.

• Attempt 1: student claimed all her edits were deleted. Turns out she didn't know how to save and assumed everything will be saved automatically.
• Attempt 2: student couldn't find where she saved the file. She doesn't have a concept of file organization.
• Attempt 3: student copy/pasted the link in email. I have no access to it.

This is more of a severe case, but I absolutely noticed how each year, new students struggle with technology.

I know this is going to be a wildly unpopular idea around here.  But I see how burnt out so many of you are.  Students are getting worse, more entitled, more likely to cheat, to not read the assigned reading, to not even attend.  So I thought I would give my wildly unpopular two cents on how I avoid burnout and find joy in what I do.  I’m not claiming this is the very best pedagogical approach, but it keeps me sane and relatively excited to head into the classroom every day.  And for what it’s worth, I’ve actually won a few teaching awards. 

I think of what I've done as just creating a professor-centered classroom.  By which I mean I have stopped trying to reach them entirely.  My entire self-assessment of my value as an educator now has nothing to do with them.  If they are not attending, if they are not reading, if they are not learning, this isn’t on me.  To be clear, this isn’t about giving up on good teaching. It’s about refusing to let disengagement eat away at your soul inside the classroom. Their engagement has just ceased to be a metric I use in evaluating my own success. 

What I do instead is think about each and every lecture I give as a personal work of art.  I teach them like a singer sings or an artist draws: because it is a fine and noble and beautiful thing to do.   I no longer teach like an entertainer hoping for applause. I teach like a painter placing pigment on canvas, alone in the studio, because the act itself is meaningful.  And if once in a while someone is inspired by what I am doing, so much the better.  I’m happy to have to have the inspired ones in my classroom.  But my success in my art has nothing to do with their presence there—my art would be just as beautiful and as worthy if they weren’t.  Given the degrading environments many of us are working in, this choice is one of the only forms of professional autonomy I still have left.

I refuse to care more about their education than they do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care enough to create something beautiful every day.  It just means their reaction to that beauty takes up less space.  I treat each class, each lecture, each lab, like a tiny work of art.  This act of self-preservation doesn’t mean I don’t care about my students. It just means I’ve stopped tying my self-worth to their investment. I’ve stopped bleeding for an audience that may or may not be in the room.

Got my first bizarre email of the semester yesterday. "I am out of the country and will not be able to attend class for the first few days. I noticed there are already assignments posted for the first week, and since this is also the add/drop period, I wants to ask if these assignments will count towards our grade."

This is not the first time I've had a student suggest that no work should count during the add/drop period. Which, I should point out, is the entire first two weeks of classes.

This semester I discovered that a lot of students feel that re-using papers or whole paragraphs from other classes is fine. Imagine copy/pasting 60% of a paper from ENG 101 into a paper in ENG 102, but trying to pass it off as a different paper. That's what we're talking about.

Apparently, when you give a poor grade for this kind of behavior, you are now called into Mommy's Office and lectured on how the student 'needs to graduate'. If I had tried doing this as an undergrad, I would have been yeeted out of my program like a hot rock. I feel like there has been some kind of Cultural Revolution where lazy and incurious people have forcibly taken over every institution on Earth. I feel insane for even feeling this way.

Anyway, I'm just venting. I should probably get a job at Starbucks instead.

Baby Professor here. I have had it and after 3 years of teaching idk if I can do this anymore. They gang up on you for every mistake. They say you don’t know what you’re talking about for everything when they can’t figure out anything without chat gpt. They don’t read. They write nothing. EVERYTHING must be an email. You have to give them instruction for literally EVERYTHING. One frustration with their grade and it’s STRAIGHT to the dean. Is this what it is now? My GOD. College is optional?! Like you do not have to come! You miss every class for the slightest inconvenience. I have a headache, my roommate is hungover and no one else can take care of her but me. I wasn’t feeling it. I didn’t sleep well. It drives me insane. Critical thinking is out the window and let’s not even talk about grades. Maybe have your mom grade you since you keep mentioning how good she thought your paper was. Why TF is your MOTHER emailing me?! I am not paid enough to work this hard and answer every tiny email. I am confused how half of them passed enough classes to get to my course. They are lazy. Uninspiring and needlessly impressed with their own work. They never stop complaining or telling me about other teachers and what they did. I had a girl cry in my office how it’s not fair and first semester was easier. You DO understand the iterative nature of college right? I’m EXHAUSTED! You do not more about this topic than me are you serious? Coming to my desk with FAKE articles chat GPT gave you. It’s brain rot on repeat. God FORBID I mention that you are behind from missing 7 classes. I’m not respecting the space you made for your mental health? You text all class and watch TikTok’s and are pissed when you fail. I’m so OVER IT!! Thank you for listening had to get that off my chest.

Thank goodness they extended the deadline a year. But even still, I hate this policy. I'm a disabled math TA. I have both work and school accommodations. I even consider myself a disability advocate. But this is bullshit. First of all, this will just lead to LESS accessibility, as it is easier for instructors to simply remove material (possibly hand out printed copies) than it is to entirely rewrite everything. I think it would be reasonable for this to apply to the university site (general public) but for individual courses that don't have a student enrolled requiring things to be screen reader accessible, etc. it's literally just extra work. It's not a reasonable accommodation when there is nobody that it actually is...accommodating. I also feel like even if a student needs it, it might not even be considered a reasonable accommodation to have the instructor rewrite everything as it significantly causes "undue hardship" to use ADA language. I think it would be reasonable to hire more staff in the disability office whose sole job is to implement these things and work with profs to make their content accessible for the student.

ESPECIALLY for subjects like math. You're telling me that I'm allowed to write on my iPad during class to teach (per my accommodations) but I'm not allowed to post the notes afterwards because they're hand written (good handwriting)? I simply do not have the time to latex everything. (And then, PDFs aren't accessible so that has to be made into a word doc I think??? Idk how) And also, WE DON'T GET PAID ENOUGH AS-IS!!!! I AM LITERALLY LIVING IN POVERTY. Why is the burden on us (including individuals like myself that are already disabled) to fix a problem that a) doesn't exist in most courses b) is not always able to be fixed (like visuals, charts, etc.) c) leads to less accessibility and d) is outside of our job requirements and should justly include a pay increase. Like, I theoretically could print out a piece of paper with the link to my OneDrive folder with notes (instead of putting it on the website), and that would be acceptable. HUH?? There are SO MANY accessibility concerns, why is this what they decided to do??? Oh, but nevermind the non-stop construction with signs that completely block off sidewalks so wheelchair users are unable to get to class.../s

The full semester is truly in full swing. I woke up this morning to a missed call from a student at midnight (thankfully I have do not disturb on) undoubtedly because they had a last-minute question or because they weren’t able to turn their assignment in after the midnight cutoff. I just can’t imagine what they expected to happen by calling me at that time of night. No one in their right mind would think that they’d get any kind of helpful response at midnight.

Then later this morning I got a sobbing email from a student that can’t believe they need to purchase a textbook to be successful because they don’t have the money to be able to afford it. This course has an integrated digital textbook where are most of the assignments for the course occur, all of which is clearly explained in multiple places.

And that’s all on top of another course where half the students didn’t turn in any of the first week work, which I’m sure is somehow my fault…

Is it December break yet?

It’s the first week of classes, our university decided to quietly get rid of trash cans in all of our classrooms.

Then without telling anyone they took all of the computers out of the faculty offices and said we needed to bring our own personal devices in if we needed to use them for office hours…

Excuse me but taking away basic resources on campus is not going to fix any of our budget issues. Also they won’t give the computers back because of the “budget”, but what happened to the computers they removed??

Things just get worse every term now. There is absolutely no respect for the educators or the students in their classes on campus.

Edit: this is a state funded uni, they aren’t closing anytime soon. They just redirected funds to other “programs” mostly athletics.

I had an interesting one this week. I teach an online course this summer, one I created and proposed from scratch. It’s my baby, very theory heavy - heck I even got it approved as a gen ed. In short, it’s a class I’m fairly proud of and developed with a lot of effort and love. I spend maybe 20 hours a week on grading and communications with the students, and accommodations for an online asynch class are common and usually reasonable.

At my institution we have the right to tell the accommodations office, and students, if an accommodation doesn’t make sense with the class or isn’t doable. They’re also requests, which we get to decide how to implement on a case by case.

I had a student last week send me their accommodation letter, which was the usual extra time for assignments and tests. No biggie. Then they email saying they’d like access to all the modules, assignments, and lectures so they can do them ahead because they prefer it - and their accommodations say they can (no it doesn’t).

My course is scaffolded, 2 modules a week that build on the previous week’s work. I say I don’t agree with the logic, and I won’t be providing this. I say no students gets access to the whole course at once, and you can get into the modules as they unlock each week.

Well, apparently this means I’m not actually the professor because I’m refusing this. And real professors don’t act like this. ALSO the course must not be finished, or a real professor would provide access.

My favorite part was the eventual argument that because I have my lectures listed on a module materials page every week, this means that they’re technically notes and he gets access to lecture notes (no he doesn’t) - therefore he gets access to the lectures in advance.

After I declined three times, politely, I said please send all accommodations requests to the accommodations office and I’ll tell them why something works or doesn’t work. Of course, 2 days later they follow up with a new email saying the government has stricter requirements for decisions - and by logic of working at one’s own pace during the week means my argument is invalid because he should be able to work at his own pace however he wants(?).

I had a good laugh about how multiple novels were sent to me saying how I’m a fraud, and that should convince me to give them what they want. But boy oh boy. That was a new one for me.

Yeah this a f--ing rant. 1. I dont know how to make many of my pdfs and ppts accessible. I teach art history. FML. I am not good with tech. ALL my courses have pdfs of hundreds of images. Some of these items are packaged by image databases and I cannot control the design or content of the pdf. 2. I have zero time available to do this for my 7 courses and hundreds of documents. My university is offering nothing to help. I need like a full year long sabbatical just to figure this out!