A funny thing happened to me the other day: one of my students called me a monkey.

He handed in a homework containing the immortal line “Je bent een aap, dat je dat weet” (“Just so you know, you’re a monkey”) instead of one of the answers.1 He went on to accuse me of not being able to produce my own answers, which (after some puzzling) I decided probably meant that he found the exercise too hard.

It took me almost a week to work up a response. First I had to cool down; then I had to find out the official policy (I’m only a teaching assistant, am I allowed to kick students out of my classroom for rudeness?); then I hoped to talk to the guy at the lesson but he didn’t show up. At that point I decided this was probably a flamboyant way of announcing his decision to quit the class.2 Finally I sent a rather acerbic mail pointing out that insulting the person who grades your work probably isn’t the smartest policy if you care about passing, and asking him if he indeed was quitting the course.3 I didn’t expect an answer.

But I got one: “I’m afraid it was a terrible mistake,” and “Rest assured it will not happen again.” The poor sod had sent me a file intended for one of his fellow students (for “reference” purposes, of course…).

The moral? For my students, I’d suggest: don’t send your work around “for reference purposes” (boring, I know). For the rest of the world… When someone calls you a monkey, don’t assume they mean it? The one I’m taking away from this is, always count your monkeys before you hit “Send”.

Notes:

  1. Olga suggested that he was simply confused about my species, and that I could help him out by trimming my beard more often. Supporting evidence being that at the Babylon Circus gig I danced “like a monkey” (O. Grigoriadou, p.c.). Against this hypothesis two observations: (1) it fails to explain the comment about finding my own answers, see below, and (2) the homework was delivered before the gig in question. As far as I can recall I have never danced in the classroom, like a monkey or otherwise. [↪]
  2. In the meantime there were other irritations to deal with: half the class didn’t read the instructions for the homework (“work in pairs”) and there were several folk to hassle about copying. [↪]
  3. For the record, I also announced the policy that work containing insults would get no grade. [↪]