Saturday, December 27, 1997

Dazzle The Professor

By KEITH CONNERS / Scripps Howard News Service

The holiday season brings many welcome things: family gatherings, sumptuous meals, a sense of renewal and personal redirection. For parents of college students, it may have brought something else: grades for the first semester's classes.

And in some families, the small envelope from the registrar's office sometimes contain tidings that are not always joyful.

Parents of college students face a dilemma.

Parents learned the limits of ranting and raving at report-card time during the high school years. They understand, intellectually, how important it is for college students to take responsibility for their own lives.

But if they are footing the tuition bill for their sons' and daughters' college education, they need to do something.

Subtlety is required. Frontal assaults don't work.

Clip and keep

Here, then, is an item designed to be torn from the newspaper and left where a college student might stumble upon it by chance. Couches, refrigerator doors or next to the cable TV remote are prime locations.

This list has been compiled in consultation with dozens of colleagues in higher education.

These are the definitive, time-honored and can't-miss strategies which are guaranteed to impress a college professor and ensure greater academic success in college:

-- On the first day of class, make sure to ask, "How many cuts are allowed?"

-- Then, when you cut a class, follow up the next time by inquiring, "Did you cover anything that will be on the test?"

-- Even more impressive is to speak to the professor in advance by saying, "I can't make it to class on Thursday. Are we going to do anything important?"

-- In a three-hour class, feel free to leave at the break. Professors never notice.

-- Don't even bother to ask if papers need to be typed. Professors are highly skilled at deciphering primary documents and actually prefer illegible scribbling over double-spaced documents prepared on laser printers.

-- If you do use a word-processor, never waste time making a back-up of your documents. Computers hardly ever crash, especially the night before papers are due.

-- Avoid ever speaking with a professor outside of class. But if you must, never make an appointment. If you do make an appointment, show up at another time.

-- Feel free to keep yourself fortified in class with aromatic fast food restaurant fare and beverage containers that slide easily off slanted desk surfaces.

-- Avoid sitting anywhere close to the front of the classroom. Back row seats are especially useful for propping up your head if you get sleepy.

-- Near the end of every class, make sure to close your books firmly and jingle car keys ostentatiously to help remind your professor that time is just about up.

-- Above all, be yourself. Make sure all of your tattoos and body piercings are visible at all times. And always wear a grungy baseball cap to class every day, preferably backward.

Personalize it

Should these suggestions fall on deaf ears with today's home-for-the-holidays college students, parents may have to personalize their message: Dig out the old college yearbook and send for a copy of the transcript.

Surely, the younger generation will then be convinced that parents know what it takes to impress a college professor.

Keith Conners is professor of education at Salisbury State University in Salisbury, MD.