Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Yesterday the College of Computer Science students doing their undergraduate thesis in astronomy software called me in the faculty room. I’ll let it pass for now, overlooking my personal policy about student consultation needing to be face to face. After all, it is summer vacation for most of them.

They wanted to schedule a demo for another animation part of their program. I gave them my next available schedule within the week.

They also asked if I still opened my e-mail. Just the other day, I said. They said they sent a question through e-mail. I checked what the question in the e-mail was. They asked me for text (written explanations) to accompany the animation they made about the night sky being likened to a rotating inverted bowl.

This is what I get for doing one of their early proposal tables for them. In fact, I could go so far as to say what I wrote was the backbone of the significance of their study.

After all, at that point, the panel was grilling them (unreasonably, I believed) about why their software needed to be done in the first place. Since their whole program was based on things that I wanted to see in one application for the purpose of teaching what I thought was a good sequence of astronomy concepts, there was a part of me that felt that their panel was actually questioning MY method of instruction. Besides, I had a no-so-ulterior motive of wanting that simulation and learning aid to see the light of day, or the light of astronomy students’ computer monitors, to be exact.

So to skip the whole vicious cycle of (1) me dictating what they could write in the “what should be taught” and “how it can be taught” columns, (2) them missing some important points, (3) showing me their preliminary work and (4) me dictating the corrections again, (5) go back to 1, and so on, I just typed out the whole table for them.

One time. Just this once, I thought.

I should have known that it’s like showing even momentary fear to a predator. They pounce on the perceived weakness, sink their teeth and claws in, and hold on for dear life.

I remember already telling them (complete with illustrations) how the bowl analogy should look like. One of them even showed the same enlightenment, interest and appreciation I wanted to draw from my students in the first place. I thought that meant we were square. But as I said earlier, I HAVE had the experience with them before of saying something, even seeing them write down what I said, only to have them paint me an incomplete picture afterwards.

I know that to a certain extent it stems from most students’ lack of self-confidence in putting down the concepts they know to be correct in their heads into clear and comprehensible words.

But I can’t coddle them anymore with this. In answer to the e-mail I just sent the link to the results page of a search I did on the internet using the same keywords they asked. Subtly it’s supposed to show them what they ought to have done before telling their consultant to just give them the answer. I would have responded a little warmer to a “Sir, are these captions we copied and pasted correct?” because it would have meant they put in a little effort before asking for help.

Just a little warmer though.