Getting Wintery

After a week of record lows, the weather finally warmed yesterday, so I drove to Mead Garden, a protected wetland/park that has a small, dragonfly-friendly lake at its center. Unlike the over-groomed lake near the house, this little body of water has a variety of aquatic plants along the shore where dragonflies can perch. I figured that it might be my best last-chance spot to photograph my favorite quarry.

Despite the sun and temperature near 80, dragonflies were scarce. One lone darner patrolled over the water, and a couple of male roseate skimmers, always difficult to photograph, zipped among the plants, resting occasionally:



I could also find perching blue dashers. I like that the light and colors indicate that winter is near:


I spotted damselflies too but had a hard time getting close enough for good shots:


I guess that dragonfly season really is coming to a close, that I'll have to wait for the new year before I get the color and variety I took for granted just a month or so ago!

If Only

Sometimes students handle situations so stupidly/badly that I must be a hard-ass when, in fact, I would have ignored or not punished the behavior if only the students had demonstrated more sense. For example, this past weekend, a student emailed me to explain that she had just agreed to adopt a puppy from an idiot neighbor. The irresponsible owner had allowed her female to get pregnant, didn't want to be bothered with the puppies, and announced to the neighborhood that she was driving them to the pound. Eliana and her friends decided to each adopt one. Because the idiot neighbor didn't want the puppies interfering with Thanksgiving dinner, she insisted that Eliana and her friends take them now at 4 weeks old. The puppies will need bottle feeding, so Eliana asked if she could bring hers to class so that she could take care of this responsibility on campus. She promised the puppy would remain in her purse.

Now what was the mistake? Emailing me, of course! I'm a dog lover; I believe that Eliana is trying to do a humane thing in a world often cruel to animals. But because I know about the dog's presence, I cannot allow it. I doubt that anyone in the room has such severe allergies to pet dander that the puppy will cause an asthma attack, but because it might, I can't say, "Sure, Eliana, bring your little doggie to class," in an email saved to the college server. If only she had just brought the damn dog hidden in her purse, then I wouldn't have to start quoting college policy. If the puppy began barking or wimpering, Eliana could have apologized then.

I had another student try to have a temper tantrum in class as I was returning graded work. I had marked "zero points" on the score sheet for a part of the assignment that was missing. All the rest of the work I had stapled together. Kristopher cried, "But I did do that part!" as he waved a separate sheet of paper in the air rather than pointing to anything in the stapled packet I had overlooked.

"If you had given that to me last week when it was due, it would be stapled with everything else," I explained.

"This isn't fair! I deserve those points. My work is right here. You're the second professor who has lost one of my papers this week!"

Maybe Kristopher did finish that portion on time but forgot to include it with all of the other pieces that he submitted—I have had him run out to his car half a dozen times this semester to fetch something that was due, and he returned in 5 minutes with the assignment. Maybe he didn't finish that portion until after I collected the work, hoping that feigned indignation would buy an extension today. Maybe he had indeed given me the piece. My office isn't in a wind tunnel, and I am very organized. But I am also human and might have stapled it with another student's work.

"You are not being fair," he said again as he stomped out after I dismissed class.

I didn't budge because Kristopher wasn't behaving like someone legitimately aggrieved. He was instead acting like a 4-year-old who wanted his bowl of ice cream immediately, even though a pile of carrots still lay on his dinner plate. If the error really had been mine—and I admit the possibility—he should have stopped by my office to discuss the matter instead of ranting in a classroom full of fellow students. If only he had met with me privately to say, "Really, Professor Lightbulb, I gave you that piece last week. I understand that you might not believe me, but I just want to say that I did turn it in," I would have taken the work and credited his score sheet.

The third student made a big enough blunder that I withdrew him. I had already warned Julio—per college policy—that he had too many absences and too much missing work. Then he missed another Tuesday and the following Thursday sent an email explaining that St. Cloud was under a tornado watch [as was all of Central Florida], it was raining really hard [so hard, in fact, that my shoes and pants didn't dry out until noon], so he wouldn't be in class again but did want to know if I had graded all of his late work. I curtly replied that I hadn't received any late work and that if he didn't hand deliver hard copies by 2 p.m. that day, I was withdrawing him.

Of course he never came. I waited until today before I withdrew him—long after the tornado watch had expired—but I did have to do it. Experience has taught me that when a student in the research class doesn't do all of the little assignments leading up to the big paper, they are either recycling a paper from another class or procuring the work in some other academically dishonest way. Perhaps Julio was just way behind. If only he had admitted that fact, promised to spend all of Thanksgiving break catching up, and brought me the work next week, I would have accepted it. But believing that I should be satisfied if he just claimed he did the work was unforgivably bad behavior.

If only students had the sense to manipulate their instructors more intelligently, both their lives and mine would be less frustrating!

Near the End?

I trekked around Leu Gardens today. It was too bright and sunny for any good pictures, and the dragonflies were in a depressing state. I found one Carolina saddlebags covered with mites:


And then I found another female looking thin, tired, and raggedy, as if she can barely hold on:


I guess like the grass which has finally stopped growing, the dragonflies need to die off to let the shorelines rest for the winter.

45 Minutes Down at the Lake

If there weren't so many responsibilities! But I always have papers to evaluate, classes to plan, and email to answer, and the hours that I spend at work slip away. Despite promises to myself, despite packing the heavy camera, I haven't gotten down to Lake Pamela. Yesterday, I finally made a real effort, but because of schedule constraints, I had only 45 minutes.

At 2 p.m. the sun was already past its zenith and beginning its descent. Since I had chosen to walk counter clockwise, I had to squint the entire trip around, which made spying small things more difficult. Our lowest temperatures have been in the 50s, so I thought that the dragonfly population would still be strong, but I was wrong. There were still specimens, but fewer in number and species. I didn't see a single four-spotted pennant, my favorite bug of 2006. The blue dashers were battling at the water's edge and saddlebag pairs flying in tandem were abundant.

I did manage to capture a pair of Rambur's forktails, insuring future children for me to photograph!


And luckily I noticed this black saddlebags perched:


The picture isn't good for identification purposes because the markings on the hind wings aren't visible, but I love those giant eyes looking right at the lens. Black saddlebags are not handsome dragonflies, but at least this guy has a little personality, and I have one more species to add to my capture list!

And the Award for Best Performance in Front of a Skeptical Faculty Member Goes to ...

The theatrics started 48 hours before the official withdrawal deadline. Tiffany, the first actress, hadn't bothered to read the policy in the syllabus, which states that students have a one-week grace period before I start penalizing late work. Her assignment was only two days late, not a matter of concern to me. Tiffany, however, was sure that she would earn a zero, so she began the performance by telling me that her best friend, after hanging on in the hospital for two days, had died that morning, the victim of a horrible automobile accident.

Now the local news here in Central Florida loves deadly car crashes, especially when a twenty something is fighting for life, giving the reporters time to analyze the accident and assign blame. If the young woman was at fault because of booze, pills, or the inability to pilot the huge SUV her parents bought for her birthday, we would have seen cops declaring the senselessness of the death. If she was the victim of someone else's drunkenness or inattention, the reporters would have broadcast family members crying for justice or weeping friends dropping off teddy bears at the roadside memorial. As a local news junkie, I had heard nothing of such an accident. The late piece that Tiffany delivered was polished, not the type of incoherent writing I would expect from someone who had just observed her best friend's death. The laser jet printing hadn't run from dripped tears.

Julio, the second actor, dashed to my office three minutes after I sent him an email warning of unsatisfactory progress. He must have been sitting at a computer on campus, updating his MySpace account or playing internet poker, not producing work he owed me, as he arrived empty handed. Although he had been an impressive student as we satisfied the literature component of the class, he was falling apart during the big research project. He was missing many assignments on top of being absent in class for the last week. Julio's performance in my office included a long monologue about Grandma. She hadn't died, but his family had learned that she was in a hospital in Columbia, about to expire from a heart attack. So the entire family had driven to Miami to catch the first flight to their home country. Before boarding the airplane, they learned that Grandma just had a bad bout of gas, nothing a Bean-O couldn't solve. Miami is three hours away by car, so how all of this drama had consumed an entire week he didn't explain. I was unable to sustain my disbelief during the performance.

Shortly after, Gerald, another nominee for best lie told to explain late work, appeared in my doorway, his open laptop in hand. "Professor Lightbulb," he panted, having run from somewhere, "how much do you know about computers?" Well, young man, quite a bit. Haven't you seen me demonstrate a range of multimedia presentations, all of which you know I created and then post to the course blog for your out-of-class download pleasure? Haven't you watched me fix problems after the AV guys throw up their hands in defeat? So I guess that you can surmise that I know quite a bit about computers.

"What's the problem?" I asked.

"I have the work I owe you—I mean, I wrote it—and I saved it, but it's not anywhere on my computer!"

He offered me the laptop as if the computer alone could fill the zeros in my grade book. When I opened Word, there were no recent documents opened or saved. The computer was either brand new or not used for writing papers. Gerald continued to pant while I ran a quick search. The heavy breathing added to my annoyance, not my sympathy. "There's nothing here," I said.

"But I saved it!" he emphasized. Despite the histrionics, I found the performance unconvincing.

My best actress—utilizing all of her high school drama club training—gave her elaborate performance in class with an audience of peers. She too owed me a number of assignments; her excuse was that a recent illness had put her way behind in all of her classes. She sat in class and fake sniffled and coughed. All the while, she crumpled tissues which formed a ring around her computer keyboard. Everyone in the room knew that she wasn't really sick because she couldn't get enough juiciness going to be truly convincing. But she would win an award for set decoration, for I found the ring of crumpled tissues an effective visual for her snow job.

This semester had been going so well that I wasn't counting down the days to Thanksgiving as I usually do at this time of year. I was enjoying my students and happy with their progress. I wasn't expecting scintillating research from them, but I did believe that they would continue to crank out the competent efforts that I had grown accustomed to.

But when students start putting their energy into lame performances instead of completing their work, they start to disappoint me. I wish that they would try honesty for a change: "Professor Lightbulb, I am a lazy slacker [or desperately trying to catch up in calculus, or working on a big group project in US Government, or whatever] and I have fallen behind. I promise that I'll have the work I owe you by _____." I would love some refreshing truth. I might even use the line my undergrad professors often used on me: "Oh, that's okay. Your writing is worth waiting for!"