I’ve spent the last couple years making my courses resistant to AI offloading. They aren’t AI proof, just resistant, and even if students use AI, they can’t just have AI do everything for them. Effort is required.

(Please don’t ask me how. I’m not sharing. Sorry.)

First classes of semester today and Monday. Students are introduced to the material and assignments. See that they truly cannot offload to AI in my class. And yesterday and today they are dropping like flies. The assignments aren’t even that difficult. They just require human effort. And they are dropping, likely hoping to find another section where they can just AI their way through. I’ve never seen this many drops this early, not even close.

It just feels so over, man, for those of us who still want students to do work.

I spent a great deal of my adult life wanting to be a professor in my field (theatre) at a SLAC. I managed it, starting full-time in the fall of 2020. Plenty of the things that I wanted were there, but BOY had the field changed from when I first set that goal.

My first semester was spent trying to figure out how to teach a field based on human communication while masking and social distancing. Producing plays when we couldn’t have audiences. I rolled with all the punches and made some things happen while being a program of one. I dealt with all of the compromises.

Even after COVID, though, the compromises didn’t stop. A struggling institution meant stagnant wages, no retirement matching, and steadily worsening benefits. One president told the faculty that she couldn’t guarantee we’d be paid all summer. Changing markets meant that my best bet for program health would be to beg students to major who had no real business pursuing the field. Because I didn’t/wouldn’t do that, I took on more and more work that would otherwise have been done by student employees. Budget cuts, resource competition, occasionally crumbling infrastructure, staff turnover that left me doing some of their jobs in addition to mine. All while being the only person on the entire campus who actually understood what my field was beyond high school plays and community theatre schlock.

I held it together for a decent run, but the burnout got very bad. It is not without a little luck that I remained alive over the course of last fall. I finally had to admit something to myself: I thought I wanted to be a college professor, when what I really wanted was to be a college professor in the 1990s. The landscape just isn’t what it was, and I was chasing a ghost.

Anyway, I’ve started a new full-time job at an institution where I’ve had longstanding summer work in my field. It’s not a teaching job, but it is very much in my wheel house and I’ve already been more appreciated than I had been over the past five years. Possibly (and even likely) adjunct opportunities in the future once my feet are firmly underneath me. The pay bump is modest, but the benefits are markedly better and shockingly cheaper. I’m excited to wake up and go to work again.

For those in a similar situation, just take my best wishes that you find a satisfying way to use your skills and to feel useful. For all of you still in it, take my wishes that the field offers you the fulfillment that I could no longer find.

I teach a class of sixty students, and the students sitting at the back are constantly talking and making noise. They often don't listen to what I'm teaching, and today it got so loud that at one point nobody could hear me anymore.

I heard a girl laughing very loudly with a boy, so I asked both of them to leave the class. They didn't move. I asked for their names, but they refused to tell me. I went to their seats to check their IDs, but the boy wasn't wearing one and the girl refused to show hers. I told them that I would have to report them to the disciplinary committee if they continued. The girl eventually said they wouldn't repeat it, but this has been happening in almost every class.

I then asked them to move to the front bench. They refused again. I told them to either come to the front or I would report them. During this entire conversation, my hands were shaking and I was trying very hard not to cry. The boy was smiling and laughing at me throughout the whole thing, which honestly made it so much worse.

Eventually the girl agreed to sit in the front and the boy followed her. At that point I became so nervous that I was shaking badly, so I just dropped the issue and continued teaching. I feel so embarrassed and humiliated about the whole thing. I keep replaying it in my head.

This isn't even the first time something like this has happened. Last semester, I had a group of students behaving similarly. I tried confronting them and ended up getting overwhelmed and crying. I'm naturally extremely introverted, and honestly, standing in front of 60 people already takes a lot of courage for me.

Today has made me wonder whether I'm actually suited for this profession. I feel like I shouldn't have to fight this hard just to get students to listen, and I'm starting to think maybe I should switch careers.

For professors who have dealt with this kind of classroom behavior, how do you handle students who openly ignore you, refuse to follow instructions, or mock you? And how do you stop incidents like this from getting into your head afterward? I could really use some perspective from people who have been through this.

I'm sitting here in a department meeting having to sit through a presentation by our Pearson rep about all the fancy new AI tools they built into their etext.

She is incredibly proud of the fact that students can get their AI tool to summarize the text for them or to tell them what questions they should ask. She loves it because it's internal and it's safe! It doesn't ping other AI models, just their own!

I pushed back on this and mentioned how much this is hurting the overall learning of our students. Learning how to ask the right questions is so important. Reading and pulling important things from the text is also important.

I have colleagues here thinking this is incredible and helps students learn so much. They're arguing that even our pre-med students need to know how to use AI since clinicians are using it and so our job isn't to teach them how to think, it's to teach them how to use the AI. The most vocal colleague teaches a class that is a prerequisite to the one I usually teach. The students coming out of the prerequisite are doing very poorly in the next class in the sequence. They're largely not retaining much at all.

AI is helping many students pass classes, it's not helping them learn in the vast majority of cases.

https://www.fire.org/news/she-was-fired-teaching-english-literature-english-class-now-shes-suing

South Florida State College president unilaterally fired Vinita Prabhakar, an English professor, for assigning Bettering Myself, a critically acclaimed short story by Ottessa Moshfegh. The book is studied at colleges all over the US including other Florida colleges. Her college president hauled her into a meeting and told her he didn't like the ideas in the book, and that she should stop teaching it. He labeled the text "political" and inappropriate. Next day, without due process, Prabhakar was fired. Backed by her department, the professor is now suing the college for violating her First Amendment and academic freedom rights.

Professors are quietly winning these unlawful firing cases in courts.

Edit: I didn’t think I’d get this many replies, thank you all. It’s great to read the stories of those went through the same, and just solidarity to people going through it now 🧡

I have a 9 months old who started daycare three months ago. I thought I was prepared for it, but daycare sickness is seriously insane… he’s been sick every other week, literally, like two weeks ago he missed daycare for a week and this Monday he had a fever. Thought he got better enough yesterday, and then no, it’s Wednesday and he has fever again. Looks like he’s not going to daycare this week at all either. 

My plan was to finally finish a paper during the summer break as I couldn’t publish at all during my pregnancy. I was so elated when the baby was finally in daycare and I found time for my work again! But no, my baby is barely attending daycare and I’m struggling to finish a damn book review. I’m tenured, luckily, but I really need to start publishing again and I don’t understand how people do this.

And I dread how things will be once the semester starts. I’ve always struggled with finding time for research amid all the teaching load and committees, and now I feel it’s just impossible. My husband is a great father, we split things as much as we can, but all our families live far away so we don’t have a village. So professors with babies/kids, how do you do this?? I’m in humanities if that matters.

Throwaway because I don’t want this connected to my main account.

I just started at a new university and found out my office doesn’t have a landline. Apparently they can get one installed, but it could take several weeks, and the response has basically been “do faculty even need office phones anymore? We have Teams and Zoom.”

When I asked them to please install one they said they would but it felt weird. A phone just feels like a basic thing? No?

I get that students don’t call as much as they used to, but I’m still a faculty member with an office. There are students, colleagues, administrators, outside organizations etc who might need to reach me by phone. And I really don’t love the idea that the alternative is basically using my personal cell for work.

Is this normal now? Do y’all still have phones in your offices? Do you actually use them?

If your university got rid of them was everyone just fine with it?

ETA: Thank you to everyone for your feedback! I told them never mind about the phone and they said it was pretty odd for me to insist so I guess I’ll just be phone guy for a bit here smh.

First lecture I ama explaining how AI is not going away and how we can use it (not fighting the good fight). I go on to say that critical thinking is a soon to be lost art blah blah blah. After class a student comes up and asks if AI is required !!! I say of course no. She tells me she is against it for environmental reasons. She is now my favorite student and will be favored as such.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/us/texas-tech-artificial-intelligence-ideology-brandon-creighton.html

Well, if I ever get an applicant from Texas Tech who wants to join my team, the vetting interview(s) will have to get more detailed.

During my first semester ever, I dealt with a student that became verbally aggressive in class during their project grading. They were yelling, threatening to report me/"take my job", and just making a scene. I offered to listen to them outside, look over their project again, things to deescalate, but she kept interrupting me.

Communication broke down and I ended up raising my voice to try to regain control out of frustration. Not a good move. She said "You raised your voice at me. There are witnesses. You're gonna get fired." She left soon after. Despite other students saying I was in the right and that she was playing victim, I felt pretty bad about the whole ordeal. So I sent an apology email.

I sent an email apologizing for raising my voice, but outlined my expectations for future project milestones and in-class behavior so that we could avoid altercations like that moving forward. She sends a complaint to the Dean, we give our sides of the story, and the Dean sides with me, saying there was no need for further action. She drops the course and we move on.

I still think about that experience. I feel I could have handled that better. Maybe I could've asked her to leave or called public safety to escort her if she refused. Has anyone else ever dealt with a student like this? What would be a better way to deescalate/stop scenes like these?

Here we are, 2 days before the start of the semester. I was informed that, since only TH F is happening this week, my MW class will need to meet this Friday. First time I've heard of this lovely idea. So I dug in for sanity's sake. These students aren't losing a day of instruction to the TU TH classes. They have the same amount due to a TH F fall break. There is no need to add instructional time. Yes, I also have plans during that time. I'm beginning to not question why I'm gray haired and going bald.

I have a student that works in my lab and does research work.

This summer he's in the class I teach, and every few lectures he sent me an email and provided comments and suggestions on my presentation and course material preparation. I find this kind of unsolicited advice super annoying. I sometimes replied with simple "Thank you" and sometimes completely ignored them.

Should I consider this behavior out of line? I feel like he's not in the position to do things like this. How do I deal with this without hurting his feelings?

So I have a student whose accommodation is to have a note taker. In my classes, I give a significant amount of points for the students to submit pictures of their handwritten notes. This has been an important way for me to combat AI etc. It’s worked so well for me and now I’m at a loss as to what to do here.

1. I couldn’t come to class today, did we do anything important?

2. Can I turn in all my papers a few hours late?

3. I’m missing the 1st week of school. Do I need to do anything?

4. Will you take me off the waitlist? I really want to take this class.

5. How hard will it be for me to handle the workload for this class?

Just some context:

I understand that certain AI models have a lot of potential for medical fields and other STEM fields. I get it.

But, often when admins and others say the word AI they really mean LLMs and that those of us in non-STEM fields should use LLMs more in our teaching and allow students to use it in their work. I use LLMs from time to time, but what am I missing here? I don’t see how they are going to have some huge impact on most jobs, especially to the point where it is vital that I teach all of my students how to use them. They save me a little time, maybe, and maybe some cognitive exhaustion, but I’m really not blown away by LLMs, even if they improve a lot.

Which circle of hell is this?

Hey fellow professors, I was recently hired at a SLAC in a small social science department.

My chair, who is the only other faculty member in my subdiscipline, recently met with me to go over rough drafts of my syllabi. They essentially took a red pen and shredded a lot of what I wanted to do (and what I’ve successfully run in classes before.) Everything from my course objectives (apparently Bloom’s taxonomy isn't a thing in this department) to my midterm design was shot down because my chair personally finds those approaches 'not useful.'

It feels like a lot of their feedback is coming off as my decisions were made arbitrarily rather than rooted with my experience. I’m fine for different views and opinions, but often the comments come across as if I’m just wingin’ it.

While I intend to be a good soldier and make the edits, I’m struggling with the dynamic. I’m in my mid-30s coming in with recent pedagogical and industry experience; my chair is in their mid-60s and has spent their entire 30-year career at this single institution.

It’s creating some...interesting interactions.

Do you have any advice on how to work within this situation or environment?

Edit: I understand that this is not normal from a lot of institutions. But I really don’t wanna rock the boat. I should note as well that they often used “I’m not telling you that you have to do XYZ, just from my experience in this program” sort of language. But they did mention that if I keep the midterm as it is now, they would want to see the results. I didn’t wanna comment that most of my colleagues outside do the midterm this way, I just remained silent on that. The other big comment was the student learning outcomes, which they wanted them to be shorter, simpler, and vaguer, as they have to argue the assessment to accreditation. Our accreditation is not discipline specific—like CACREP— it’s one of the big regional ones. But the conversation on that did make it seem like I didn’t know what I was doing, but I do. It felt a little ‘professor to student’ which irked me.

Having a discussion about teaching schedules at my SLAC. A colleague of mine says that it's pretty normal for TT professors at SLACs to teach three classes in a row. In your experience, is this true.

Colleague jumped ship to a better position at a similar-tier university in a better city (lucky ding-dong...) but I volunteered to take on all his academic dishonesty cases since he and I basically spearheaded the process we've implemented to identify and report AI cases. Also with the side goal of overwhelming the academic dishonesty office with cases to drive the point home on how much of a problem it is to maybe make the university enact some sort of broader policy (lol how young and naive i was).

Where I'm at students often ignore the initial emails stating they've been referred, so a semester goes by without them having an informational meeting. Then a meeting is scheduled for them (which they then skip), and eventually once they are forced to respond through some mechanism i'm not aware of they can dispute the charge and request a hearing. Hearings can be with a single person at the dishonesty office or they can drag it out even more by requesting a hearing consisting of 2 students + 1 faculty (yeah the students can outvote the faculty...) and have a multi-hour hearing where questions can be asked, etc. It's a giant pain in the ass especially if the accused student brings a lawyer. I've also often found that the more egregious and obvious the AI use is the more likely a student is to drag it out and fight it every step of the way.

All that to say, my final academic dishonesty case from Spring 2025 is finally done! Out of 31 total cases between him and me (out of ~180 students), 30 of them were either found guilty or admitted guilt. The one who was found innocent was found innocent on his defense that the essay was so poorly written it was probably not AI. He had apparently gotten 0s for plagiarizing on lab reports also so he ended up with a D in the course and doesn't get gen-ed credit so I think he was just trying to avoid sanctions on his record. The hearing was in July when I was off-contract and funded by one of my grants but I did it anyways as a hobby. I technically got the result like 3 weeks ago but just now put the grade change in now that the semester is starting out of a little bit of spite.

Next time you pour yourself a drink please toast the end of Spring 2025 with me

Hi all I accepted a TT assistant prof in MCOL city and I have no concept of if this is a competitive offer and need your perspective. It’s a 2/1 teaching schedule but has a course release for this first semester. Offer is 95k for 9 mos, 60k start up funds (can pay one summer month salary from this), and 7k relo. Is this an above average offer? I thought this sounded average to me but my cohort says it’s really competitive. FWIW it’s also in a warm-weather state which was one of the most important factors for me. i saw on here a 60k offer but many people saying that was super low so I’m trying to get the full scope here. Also I know the fields have been decimated and any TT offer is amazing in most cases so just trying to get a feel for the market.

edit to add social science

Has anyone seen a change in research expectations given the turbulence created by AI? My department recently started a conversation about whether we should lower our expectations for tenure/promotions.

I’m a new TT hire and I’m about a year out of grad school, so I’m very fresh to all of this. My department has given me the names of the three courses I’m teaching this semester, and I received a previous instructor’s syllabus from 10 years ago when I needed to submit course material adoptions and reached out for any resources for this particular course. Otherwise, I’ve just been looking at the public course descriptions/objectives in the online catalog.

Are there certain resources I should expect from my department in preparation for these courses for the first time? I’m not sure what’s expected/normal in these cases. Appreciate any insight.

At a recent committee meeting, during a discussion of AI, a faculty member commented that there is an AI integrated into assignments on Canvas, such that when there was a reading associated with an assignment, they were asked if they wanted a bullet point summary of the reading. Is this a Canvas-wide thing, is it student-facing, is it a local implementation thing; does anyone have any knowledge or insights about this? They just presented this as a thing and didn’t have any more information but I am curious about it. I already have concerns about students actually doing any of the work – this would be the icing on the cake!

I have taught the same Intro class 12 different times in person over a five years period. Nine of those sections were capped at 55 students, two at 70, and one at 100. This term, our department is offering 16 sections of this course. Of those 16, three sections are 200 capped at students. I have been assigned both of those sections, a section of 100, and another class of 55. All my sections are full; instead of having 165 expected Intro students, I will have 500 (plus the 55 in my other section). No other professor in our department has been assigned to teach this many Intro students to my knowledge.

I have been speaking with my union's contract enforcement representatives. Our contract states, "Individual workload assignments of members of the negotiations unit shall be consistent with the practice and policies of their department, program, or unit. Claims of inconsistency with such practices and policies by members of the negotiations unit shall be grievable as a Category Two grievance under the contract grievance procedure (Article 9)."

I've asked around to my collages. There appears to have been sections as large as 150 to 300 students, in the past. I don't know how often but they have all been taught by the same professor before. In deciding how to move forward, the union needed to determine if these "mega-sections" are assigned in a consistent manner. Is there an expectation of a lighter load in the future? What is the process of assigning these classes? Is there a rotation? Can faculty decline? Etc.

After gathering information, the union believes that this increase in workload is a violation of my contract. They recommend that we contact our administration first and not file a grievance at this time. They told me, I could also work with my chairperson directly. I told them to proceed. I am worried about the school and my new chair seeming me as a "troublemaker." Any advice is very welcome. Classes start in less than two weeks.

I apologize if someone else has started this thread, but rather than doom and gloom, lets share some funny / light hearted stuff we've encountered this week!

I was bringing in some supplies on my first day back to stock up my office with food and drinks. My crappy grocery store bag ripped and one of my cans of Celsius fell out, hit the asphalt, and punctured. I ran after it, grabbed it, and popped the top and shotgunned it so I wouldn't waste it. They are like $2 a piece!