End of Semester Blues

It seems that the end of this semester is bringing out the worst in both students and faculty. Like many others, I typically assign at least one team project over the semester. As part of the project, I require students to complete Peer Evaluations for each of their teammates, the idea being that free-riders will be identified and their grade adjusted accordingly. It usually works pretty well, since the students know going into the project that their grade is determined in part by their teammates. However, it appears that at least one student doesn't care for this approach:

"I'm sick and tired of team projects. I end up doing all the work, and all it does is make me bitter and cynical ... I'm just too burnt out. Team project after team project has left me a bitter husk of a man who wants nothing to do with teams."

As for the faculty, well, we have one person (tenured, of course - let's call him ol' surly) who is not only a "the-glass-is-half-empty" type of person, but "the-glass-is-half-empty, it's-leaking, and the-stuff-in-it-is-vile-and-foul" type of person. Case in point:

We are trying to fill a couple of vacant faculty positions. The normal procedure is to review the application packages, narrow the pool to 5 or 6, conduct a round of phone interviews, and then bring the three finalists in for a campus visit. As part of the visit they meet with assorted faculty members and administrators. It's a fairly standard process that a lot of universities use.

In our case, the first applicant that visited sent us an email from his smart phone on the way to the airport withdrawing from consideration. The second one waited until she got back to her office, but then sent a similar email. We couldn't figure out why.

After some probing, it turns out that ol' surly told them both that the water down here wasn't safe to drink, and that you had to take your own toilet paper to the bathroom. God knows what he told them about us and the students.

Since he's tenured there isn't much that can be done to him (this is one of many things that are wrong with the tenure system, but that's a whole other topic). About all we could do was amend the process to ensure that he isn't left alone with any of the remaining candidates.

I'm done with two of my classes, and only have one final to give and grade in the third class. After that there's one final meeting (of course...) next Thursday, and then I'm out of there for the summer. Many Shiners will be sacrificed to the gods in gratitude...