Hi class,

Wanted to provide some help for the final. My TAs told me that there were people very vocally dissatisfied with their letter grade, with rage extending to reporting me to the dean and even the Diamondback. This is of course despite the fact that I enhanced the curve to realistically account for D-, D and D+ (completely within my purview to not have done that) and that these cut-offs are without 30% of your total class credit (hw9 grades not in yet, all regrades for M2 not in yet). Once I heard that, I already prepared a nice packet of all the things I have done for you as well as the facts about the class’ historical and current curve for my inevitable chat with my higher-ups. The chat happened, and it resulted in zero changes in our curving policy.

This is not a war, but if you choose to make it one, you are currently battling a person who has done things which, if I were to analyze in a discussion, you would need to use your phone for some of those “extended screenshots”, because not even my 4K monitors at work have a high enough resolution to capture it. I figured this out when I captured a screenshot of this announcement.  In fact, you have chosen to go to war with me (your instructor who actually cares about your learning) during a time that I am preparing your final exams. No worries class, I’m a machine that never gets affected by environmental cues. This is not going to affect either my selection of final problems or whether those problems have typos that will confuse you all: it’s all good!

This is not a war, but if you choose to make it one, I’m prepared. I have documentation of all the things that I have done for you and my records go back so far that I am able to give you inferences of type “nobody who ever got under a 50% in the first midterm of CMSC250, as long as I have been teaching, passed the class”. Or, when one of you asked me in CW about M1 grades from past semester, I cross-checked students who are re-taking the class, their first midterm grade, and their last semester first midterm grade, to provide the student with a statistically accurate answer. I am SUPER organized, and you are up against a person with ridiculous record-keeping skills.

This is not a war, but you choose to make it one, out of grade mongering taught by family and school, let it be so. Everybody knows that if you don’t get an A in CMSC250, you just suck. In fact, in your jobs tomorrow, if your boss at any point in time finds out that you’ve got a non-A in your grades, you will be immediately fired*.* This is a war against somebody who is hampering your professional future! We need to get such people out of the way and back to their country; we simply cannot have Filippou not allowing you to get your God-given A. You deserve it, you are entitled to it and you are better than other people who get lower letter grades than you. Don’t ever let anybody tell you otherwise.

I also have some bad news which dictate how unfair life is. I am 100% certain that the following will be quoted without context, so after posting this announcement I’m taking a full screenshot for my defense purposes (since this is now a war, and I need to be ousted for your academic good). Some of you are going through egregious stuff. Some of you are non-binary and can’t go back to your parents because they blame you for being non-binary (!). So you’re stranded in an empty, depressing campus, where you can’t just grab a friend and ask them for some help in 250 or another course. Some of you (us)  have tummy or other issues that they don’t want to go to a doctor for because people are dying because of COVID, so they are suffering out of choice*.* Some of you commute every day to campus from Pleasant View Gardens, Latrobe, Dunbar, Fayette, Orleans Street, and you are trying every day to escape crime and drug-infested environments that nobody is ever doing anything about. And right now, your local medical centers, pharmacies, even grocery stores are closing down completely, metal doors and all, otherwise they will be looted. Not even drive-through pharmacies for essential medication. Those people are known as heroes, but most of them cannot afford capes.

The bad  news is that the fact that COVID has hit you especially hard and your circumstances are egregious does not make you in any way better prepared for 351. It is completely unfair, but it’s the truth. I am accommodating the university standard by expanding the curve from μ-σ to μ-1.5σ, but I am not in any way fooling myself: it means that some of you will pass without even knowing the basics of induction, or perms / combs. And the 351 professors of the Fall have already been notified of this, so that they are adequately prepared and their course accounts for this, if at all possible (I don’t think it is). It is unfair that COVID has hampered your learning, but it is the way it is, and it is not my or the TAs’ fault. It is not anybody’s fault. It is the circumstances of a life where shit happens and while it’s not your fault that it happened, it’s still your responsibility to deal with it in the best way possible.

“But we are paying for this, and you are making us pay more.”

No I’m not. It is not me; it is the circumstances and the U.S Ed system. My concern is entirely academic: if you don’t understand induction and combinatorics, you are doomed in 351. Doomed. And then, when you don’t pass, you’re gonna go on Reddit and complain about Clyde. I am not one to converse about tuition money, social ills or other such circumstances: I am not an expert on this stuff and I should best STFU about them.  But I can give you some insights about this money situation and how it is not my concern: suppose I am the worst instructor in the world, for whatever reason. The fact that you are paying does not in any way change me. People are not going to become more skilled and better behaved if you pay money. They become so through hustle, failures, choices that they make every day. If you ever get a non-passing grade in a class, for heaven’s sake, for any conceivable heaven’s sake, IT IS NOT A STATEMENT THAT YOU ARE A BAD PERSON, IT IS A STATEMENT THAT YOU HAVEN’T LEARNED ENOUGH TO GO ON.  And this is something that is also not changed by the fact that you are paying. It’s almost as if things that have to do with your education are not really changed by the monetary cost that this country chooses to attach to them! But hey guys, don’t buy all this; the problem here is your instructors. Those sons – a – bitches are there to just make you suffer. We are the barrier between you and your true happiness in life, and you need to just find ways to circumvent and punish us for all the grief that we bring in your lives! This cannot continue!

By the way, if you choose to go to the Diamondback either with your original dissatisfaction / rage or by choosing to quote me out of context here, you will likely be presented with the question: “Filippou? Is that the same guy who contacted us about getting rid of ELMS because it doesn’t meet the goals of distance learning and has wrecked havoc for hundreds of his students, who are still his chief concern during pandemic times?”

An appropriate response to that question, if it is addressed to you, would be : “Yeah, that guy.”

JF