Creating the Syllabus

It's a bit weird being a full-time student (grad school) while also being the professor for a bunch of undergrads.  First off, I'm not really a professor.  I'm just an instructor.  But over the years I've come to realize that, to all but the most astute undergraduates, it makes no difference whatsoever.  I'm the guy teaching, so I'm a professor.  The weirdness is not so pronounced when I'm merely acting as the Teaching Assistant (TA) to an actual professor.  But, this semester I am again teaching solo.  Classes start tomorrow.

The first duty of any instructor is to figure out how to teach their class.  I'm sure that other departments and other universities are much more controlling of how senior grad students teach upper-level courses.  In my department I get total academic freedom.  While that's a dream to some, it also means you're given all the rope you need to hang yourself.  So you have to be careful.  And you don't get much in the way of feedback from the department about how you're teaching once the semester starts.  I've been officially observed/assessed in my teaching only one time in three years, outside of being evaluated for teaching awards I was nominated for.  (Departmental TA of the Year and Departmental Advanced Course Instructor of the Year are both awards that are mounted on my office wall - thank you very much.  I even won them honestly.  They're not made up.  I swear!)

The embodiment of all your planning is the syllabus.  It lays it all out there.  More importantly, it's your one and only chance to establish ground rules that will save you considerable grief down the road.  It's your one shot to "CYA" (Cover Your Ass).

Let's say a student misses an exam without notice and now wants to take it without penalty.  This student seemed shifty to you all along, and you think they might have gotten exam questions from people who have already taken the test.  Well, unless you have a crystal-clear missed exam policy in your syllabus, they can complain to the department and force you to give it to them without penalty.  Or, maybe a student has a disability, and requires accomodations.  But they don't tell you about it until halfway through the semester, and now they're demanding the option to retake old tests and redo assignments.  Whaddya do?

What you do is sit down and think of every slimy thing that a student might do, relying on your own background as a student, as well as the horror stories of other teachers.  Then you try to craft an airtight syllabus that will address every conceivable issue a student could come up with.  Unfortunately, you're probably outgunned.  The fact that you're a grad student means that you were probably an exemplary undergrad, and don't have a lot of personal deviousness to rely on.  Well, unless you're me of course.  Then your personal deviousness stores are overflowing.  But it's still tough to anticipate everything students might do.

Anyway, I finished my syllabus for this semster.  Most of my CYA disclaimers are holdovers from the last time I taught this course.  But I always add a little bit extra.  If you're interested in seeing how yours truly goes about teaching a senior-level psychology course, you can read the whole syllabus here.  If anyone wants to do a long-distance study-at-home version of this class, I'm happy to accomodate you.  So long as all the tuition you might have paid the school makes its way to my pockets instead.