Electronic gadgets in class

As I move into the curmudgeon stage of my life, I find that I can articulate what annoys me more (maybe because more things do?). One thing that really annoys me is when students use their phones in class. There are three main ways I see students interact with their phones in class, ranked here from most annoying to least:

1. Forget to turn their ringers off
A cardinal sin! This annoys everyone in the class. Worse when using an obnoxious ringtone. Even worse when during an exam (when cellphones are forbidden, and stored in the back/off to the side so the ringtone can't be turned off).

2. Constantly check their phone
I find this really distracting when I am teaching. The motion draws my eyes, and then I find myself wondering what is so important. It also annoys me that the student is obviously not paying any attention to the lecture. Why bother coming, then? It is just like coming to the lecture and then reading the newspaper, and just as obvious. Students forget that from the front of the room, I get a pretty good view of every seat, so it is pretty noticeable when someone keeps checking their phone. It is hugely distracting to neighbors as well, whose eyes are also drawn by the motion and the screen. 

3. Students texting/Facebooking/whatever on their phone
Somewhat less distracting than #2 because their is less to draw attention, but seriously why come to class if you aren't going to pay attention. I know lots of people think they can multitask,and both text and pay attention to the lecture, but loads of studies have demonstrated that this is BS, and the constant attention swapping makes effective learning impossible. Students may think that their professors don't care about teaching, but I do, and I put a lot of effort in. Texting in class feels like a slap in the face, and I find it extremely rude and distracting.

4. Students keeping their phones in their laps for the whole class
This is at least an attempt at subtlety. Students doing this may not realize this, but from the front of the room, this looks like the person is staring at their crotch for the whole class, which looks very bizarre.

Strangely enough, students using laptops in class is a lot less annoying (to me anyway--I suspect someone browsing in class is probably pretty distracting to their neighbors!). I have seen many students who take notes on their laptops, so there is at least the plausibility that the student is working and paying attention. I distribute my notes electronically, and so it isn't that odd that someone might prefer to use them that way as well. That said, I am well aware that some of the laptop using students are probably doing something else. If they are, it is less disruptive than a phone. There is less motion involved, and I can't see the glow of the screen, so it is less attention grabbing.

I was talking about this issue with a colleague, who is considering banning cellphones entirely in class. Have any of you tried it or thought about it?
 

Student demands

I am not sure if students are feeling more entitled, feeling less intimidated by authority, have less tolerance for BS, or are just plain ruder, but the number of unreasonable demands I am getting via email seems to be going up each year. It is not all of my students. In fact, I think the demanding students have just gotten more demanding, not that more and more students are being demanding, if that makes sense.

For example, grade grubbing is probably as old as grading. That said, this is the first year I received outright demands for higher course grades without an accompanying sob story or other justification, just the statement that they really want/feel like they deserve a better grade. Most of the sob stories were probably BS, or at least not a justification for a higher grade, but still, there is something much more off-putting and self-centered about "please raise my grade because I want a higher one."

More and more students (in fairly large courses) have been asking for individual meetings to discuss course material rather than attending office hours (which are often sparsely attended anyway, especially when far from exams). I always ask what other class they have during my office hours so I can consider the timing for my future scheduling, and many of them don't have a conflict, they just want to meet me one-on-one, and don't see why I shouldn't be able to accommodate them. If I press them, they just want to meet me alone, again with no justification other than that they want to. 

Many students ask if my classes are recorded (which I really don't like doing), and get upset if the answer is no. I really dislike recording classes--attendance ends up much lower, people get very upset when there is a technical glitch that ruins the recording (often out of my hands), and a decent number of students end up binge watching the lectures a night or two before the exam, which does their education no service. But I've been hit in course evaluations about not caring about my students for not recording lectures, and I fear that this will be the new norm.

Students also don't seem to understand that prerequisites are required not just as hoops to jump through for a degree, but are in fact a guide to what knowledge they are expected to have before coming to a class. I teach a physical science (at the sophomore level right now), and I have had many students surprised that I expect some skill with math, even though calculus is a prereq for my course. I had a student tell me they don't integrate, and another tell me that it was so unfair that they lost points on an exam for not remembering how to manipulate exponents, since this is a class in science not in math. I've had many students tell me that expecting them to remember things from freshman science courses is unfair or unrealistic, never mind that my course builds on that material.

In addition to being demanding, I find that more students are falling on the disrespectful side of informal. I've been addressed as "Hey Prof", as "Yo!" and by my first name, all of which I find fairly disrespectful for an undergrad taking a class with me. I generally like the relationships I have had with students in my courses. The students who attend class, and come to office hours generally do well, and I have had good interactions and conversations with them. I am not super-formal with my students, but I am also clearly not their friend or peer. I am not the kind of person who demands respect for my authority, but quite frankly, disrespect like this won't translate well into the wider working world. This is one aspect I struggle with, since I also don't want to spend my teaching time teaching email and professional etiquette.

Conference travel

Conference travel is really important for getting your name and your work out there, for networking, and for keeping up with what is really going on in the field that either is unpublishable or not published yet. As a lifelong introvert, I've really had to work at effective networking. It took me a while to figure out how to make the most of conferences. As I've gotten older, I find that I like the big society meetings less and less. A big meeting is huge, which means it is hard to just run into people, so key meetings have to be planned. Everyone is always running somewhere. The talk quality is highly uneven, especially since giving a quality 15-20 minute talk is really hard for an inexperienced person. Conferences always exhaust me, since I find spending so much time with people tiring, and the always on nature of a meeting is very draining. The endless busy-ness of a big meeting makes this worse for me.

As a student, I loved the wide range of topics, the exhibitions (with their swag) and the opportunity to put faces to the names on papers. Now that I am more established, I find that I am much happier to send my students to the big meetings, and attend smaller, more focused meetings myself. I still get energized from a good topical conference, and I love the opportunity to get up to speed quickly in a new direction by listening to expert talks rather than reading a lot of papers. That said, I find when I get back from a big society meeting, I am more likely to just be tired than to be excited by science. I do attend one big one per year, since it is a good idea to be seen, but I don't really miss it when I don't go for some reason. I guess there is no avoiding turning into a curmudgeon with age!