Cripes. What an endless semester. This has been one of the most difficult semesters I can remember.
In the magazine writing course, which mercifully is online — meaning I don’t have to confront at least one nut case face to face — a woman plagiarized not one but two assignments, all the while bleating that I was not returning her papers. Each of her papers had been returned to both of the e-mail addresses she’s been using, and, when it appeared that they may have been intercepted by her system’s spam filter, I re-sent every paper and her current score spreadsheet from not one, not two, but three e-mail addresses.
She finally gets the message that copying and pasting a web page into a Word document and turning it in as her work results in a grade of zero. Now she e-mails and asks if she may be allowed to rewrite the plagiarized assignments for a grade.
I should do a lot of extra work because you decide to cheat in a college course? Right! Let us leave aside the fact that I consider it deeply insulting that you think I’m so stupid I can’t figure out that you’re cheating. Give me a break!
Moving on, when I had a few minutes to sit quietly and think while stringing beads for a living, the weary mind turned to the issue of Ms. Annoyance.
Her behavior becomes more bizarre as the days pass. On a couple of occasions, she has walked into the classroom, sat down, sulked, and after about 15 or 20 minutes has gotten up and walked out. The last time the class met, though, she didn’t even sit down. She walked in, stood there, looked slowly around the classroom, and then turned around and walked out.
One of the students in that class, a grown woman with several kids of her own, told me that she was afraid of Ms. Annoyance, who, she said, telephoned her in the middle of the night in some sort of manic state. I didn’t question her in any detail, because I tend not to encourage neurotic or exaggerated concerns. However, in light of the way Ms. A is behaving, I wonder.
Statistically, it’s unlikely that she’s dangerous. Strafing classrooms with a street sweeper is a guy thing.
However, my concern is that she could be a danger to herself. I’m becoming increasingly concerned that she might harm herself. And I’m not sure what to do about it.
I’ve already made such a flap about this woman that I hate to draw more attention to her — which could be harmful, too — or to myself. I’m sure the chair already thinks I’m plenty eccentric — last week I had to let him know about the exchange between me and the plagiarist, which entailed forwarding her papers and cc-ing him with e-mails bearing the plagiarized copy. Earlier in the semester I dragged Ms. A into his presence so we could sit her down and make her understand that she can’t engage in disruptive behavior during class time. If I create another scene over Ms. A, he’ll likely think I’m crazy as a loon.
That conclusion may be correct, but I’d just as soon he didn’t know it.
On the other hand, what if she commits suicide? Of course, it’s not my fault if someone else chooses to off herself. But it could be my fault if I sense she’s about to harm herself and do nothing to intervene.
Her class doesn’t meet until next Tuesday. No one is on the campus over the Thanksgiving weekend, and that includes the counseling people. There’s not a thing I can do about it until Monday. The question is…what, if anything, to do on Monday?
