The Classroom Conservative

Paying For Previews

Back when I frequented the movie theatre regularly, back before ushers turned a blind eye to rows and rows of patrons talking back to the screen, I made sure that my friends and I always showed up in time for the previews.  (That is not true, strictly speaking: I recall as a kid being ten minutes late for Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Imagine going for years without being aware of the opening scenes of that film!)  I still figure that if you are going out, dodging bedbugs and pools of spilled soda, you owe it to yourself to get the full media experience.  As I sat in a dingy art house in Oxford in the mid-1990s, waiting for my weekly dose of kitchen-sink realism, I was blown away by ninety seconds of the upcoming Pulp Fiction.  My head was spinning!  What a reminder of the artistic range of film, itself.  Previews are essential to the theatre experience, much as they were essential to the experience of going to the drive-in.

Previews are not, however, essential to the home theatre experience.  Do you remember when your DVD had, in its main menu, a section for “Coming Attractions”?  If you fancied pretending that your living room was a movie theatre, you could always practice staying quiet…  Or you could choose to watch five or ten minutes of trailers.  Of course, these would be previews of other films from the company that produced your DVD and unlikely to be relevant to you in the same way, say, that the trailers for a horror film in the theatre would also be for horror films.  Now, however, if instead of going to the theatre, you choose not to wait for the movie network premiere, you can plunk down $25 for the Blu-Ray and be forced to sit through previews.  Press “top menu” and be told that “this function is unavailable.”

I accept fully that I have to be told, for the twenty-five thousandth time, that I could go to jail for copying the film I just bought, but I do not know why – for example – I have to be told, when waiting to watch The King’s Speech, that I should see The Fighter.  I saw it last month!

The principle, as I understand it, is that should you choose to take advantage of free (or cheaper) content, you have to put up with some inconvenience.  The free version of apps can have ads.  The free New York Times Book Review podcast should have advertisements: it makes the enterprise possible.  The basic cable version of films on AMC are butchered and bogged down by long segments of ads.  But if I pay a premium, I expect a certain degree of convenience.  My cable and internet bill is well beyond $100 a month.  But when I press display on my cable box, I see all the channels I do not get.  What is that if not an advertisement that runs 24/7?

How much money would someone have to pay to be exempted from the soft sell, that pressure to buy more even after we have been sold?

No, Air Canada, I Am Not A Nuisance

I woke up last Wednesday morning to a heavy snowfall warning for Calgary.  I would not have cared, normally, except that I was in Vancouver, and I had to get back home for the last day of the semester.

No, Air Canada, I am not a nuisance.

I was in British Columbia, on short notice, to attend a meeting at the airport hotel.  Because there are only a handful of connections between Calgary and Lethbridge, I was booked on the last flight of the day: one that did not leave until 11pm.  I picked the 7pm out of Vancouver because I thought that I might as well wait around in the city than in the Calgary airport.  Now I was not so sure.

My flight had a weather advisory on it, so – during a break in the meeting – I raced half the length of the airport to speak to a customer service agent.  Apparently, it is no longer the policy that same-day, discretionary changes are allowed when the airline issues a weather advisory.  But I was told that a ticket agent might be willing to help me.  I thanked the agent, assured her that I understood that she was just following the rules, but explained that I had to get back to my meeting.

Then, a colleague who had driven to Calgary made me an offer: get back on his flight out of Vancouver, and I could catch a ride to Lethbridge with him – with any luck, before the storm set in.

As soon as the meeting was over, I returned to customer service, determined to abandon any additional time in Vancouver – I would not set foot outside the airport, it turned out – and determined to forfeit my fare for the last leg of my trip.  I just wanted on the earlier flight, a plane that was half empty, by the way.  I asked the agent if the status had changed for my original flight, and I asked for directions to that ticket counter.  Once more, I thanked her.

By the time I got to speak to the ticket agent, I was less hopeful.  If I was buying a seat on the flight, it would be more than a thousand dollars, even with lots of seats available.  To be clear, I was in no way attempting to circumvent normal Air Canada pricing.  I was simply trying to be proactive.  In fact, if I took the later flight to Calgary and there got stuck, after a weather advisory had been issued by the airline, they would be on the hook for my hotel room, it was explained to me.

So, the ticket agent was quite sympathetic.  She understood what I had been doing.  In the end, for something less than the usual change fee and no fare differential, I did get on the earlier flight.  But there was some red tape, as it turned out.  The ticket agent explained to me why it was difficult to help me:

For asking twice for information at the customer service kiosk, a note had been entered on my file.  I was branded a nuisance.

Teaching, Week Thirteen: Secondary Sources

In first year, I do not let my students use secondary sources; I want them to concentrate on framing their own ideas and writing effectively.  By third year, I expect them to navigate expertly in a world of literary critics.

But where do they learn to do that?

Second-year classes offer their own kind of purgatory: they are filled both with students for whom the course is a follow-up to introductory studies and students looking for an "easy" elective credit at the end of their programs.  How well would the first steps to adapting a theorist work there?

A secondary source should inspire original thought.  Used properly, a good critic can, with a phrase, introduce a line of enquiry; a good critic can, with a phrase, summarize what a student has been trying to say.  But, increasingly, I get sentences from published professors that are little more than non sequiturs in the midst of lines and lines of jumbled phrases.  I was shocked, this time, to see students let critics lead them in directions that had nothing to do with their theses.

They had to find secondary sources, you see: no one said they had to know how to use them properly.

Teaching, Week Twelve: What To Do With A Late Paper

The most popular blog post I have ever written was the piece on job interviewing: my belief that the last candidate interviewed has some advantage.  But the biggest reaction I ever got was to the post in which I pledged to accept no late papers at all, unless accompanied by a doctor's note.  I even got phone calls from foreign media.

My argument then, as now, was rooted in the subjectivity of the exercise.  All students are busy: why should someone who asks for a couple of days get them while someone else pulls an all-nighter?  And why a couple of days?  Worst yet is the complicated algebra of late penalties: could someone really improve a paper by twenty per cent by taking an extra day and assuming a ten per cent penalty?

So, instead, a couple of years ago, I adopted a policy of giving very long deadlines.  While I always announced dates in the first class, I rededicated myself to assigning the actual work long in advance.  This term, we had an interim assignment that ensured students did not leave the assignment to the last minute.  I returned those promptly, and the class still had weeks to finish up.  In return, I set out to hold to the "no late papers at all without documentation" policy.

So, how did I do?  For twenty-eight of the thirty-two students still registered, there was no issue.  From two other students, there was no submission at all -- zero out of thirty-five marks -- even though I wrote them to enquire if there had been an emergency of some kind.  No reply.  But two other students had interesting issues.

The first student came to visit me a day before the essay was due.  The student was seeing a counsellor on campus and wanted to know what had to be secured in order to get an extension.

 "What's going on?" I asked.

 "That's what I have a counsellor for," the student replied.

Eventually, after assuring the student that I needed no intimate details, I got enough information to justify an extension of one week.  I decided not to hold out for a medical note.

About three hours after I wrote the students who did not submit, I got an email from someone who claimed to have submitted just a little late.  (The essay was there, as it turns out.)  The explanation was that a couple of extra hours made, in the student's judgement, a big difference.  To review: an imperfect essay on time is not as good as an imperfect essay, slightly improved, that cannot be accepted.  How does that make sense?

In the end, I decided to take the paper without penalty.  (It got a "B.")  I do not think that it would have been fair to impose an arbitrary grade reduction.  I would have accepted papers from the other two students up until the end of the day, too, and so the only students who have a potential complaint are those who got theirs in on time, losing the "benefit" of a couple of extra hours.  My justification is that such little time could be explained as nothing more than a rounding error, and I have always taken the view of the Parable of the Vineyard Owner regarding those people who got no extra time.  As long as they got all the time to which they were entitled, they should be satisfied.

Would I have felt the same if the student had shown up a full day, two days, three days late?  I suspect not.  Common sense defines my approach.  If, in the "real world," an employee has a presentation to make and cannot get it in on time, the business will not wait for that presentation.  But it also makes common sense to show some flexibility when the discretion sought provides no material advantage.

That, ultimately, is the truth.  After reading the paper, I am more convinced than ever that it would have been the same "B" had it been submitted on time.

Shilling For Apple

Between two o'clock and five o'clock last Friday afternoon, I stood in line at Best Buy in order to purchase an iPad 2.  My only similar experience was with Boxing Day sales, where I often go out just for the fun of it.  I remember one winter standing outside Future Shop in Newfoundland in order to pick up a digital camera for next to nothing.  But last week was hard core.  I was an Apple shill.

The lines are contrived, of course.  In spite of the price of commodities and the problems in Japan, there is no real shortage of Apple products.  My issue is that, for a number of complicated reasons, I had to commit to this product by the end of March.  Rather than picking one up at my convenience, I was obliged to be seventh in somebody's line.  I was lucky number seven at Best Buy, and -- as a result -- I got the second of five black, 64GB, wi-fi only iPad 2s.  Number twenty-seven might have to choose between a too-trendy white or a 32GB.  Sucker.

On my way from work, stopping by London Drugs to convince myself that I didn't really want a new printer, instead, I found a small queue inside the store.  "How many iPads do you have?" I asked the pierced and pimply salesman.  "Fourteen."  Math looked good.  "Do you have a variety of models?  What about if I line up for hours and you've got no black, 64GB, wi-fi only?"

"You'll have to get another model."

Best Buy it was.

I could have been tenth in line at London Drugs.  I ran a yellow light.  I stopped at the house to pick up some headphones and a book.  When I reached the big box, there were six people standing outside the door, next to a sign that read "iPad 2 Line Here."  I poked my head inside the door and asked the greeter, "How many?"  I was assured only, this: "There are three people in this store who know: I'm not one of them."  The night before, another salesman told me that they would have lots of stock.

Well, my odds had to be better than at London Drugs.  They would have more iPads at Best Buy than at the little London Drugs, right?  So, outside I go.

Why the secrecy about the number of units?  Well, if there is no reasonable expectation of success, there is no queue.  And if there is no queue, there is no news coverage and less buzz for Apple.  It is for this reason that we were made to line up outside, in temperatures below zero.  Unfortunately, when the Global reporter was by, three hours earlier, there was only one person in line.  They needed a tight shot to replicate a Apple Store frenzy.

By the time we were admitted into the store, the teenaged girl ahead of me had turned blue.  My hands had frozen to the point that I could not read the book I had brought.  We were told that Best Buy was breaking "Apple policy," but I was grateful nonetheless.

I suspect it is destiny.  When I bought my first computer, in 1988, Macintosh was simply too expensive for an undergraduate humanities student.  Slowly, over time, I got an iPod, an iPhone, and -- now -- an iPad.  We will all end up Mac people, I now have no doubt.  But why must they make us, transparently, so complicit in their search for world domination.

I love this iPad.  Would I have loved it any less if I had bought it with warm hands?