Etydhv

My finals were held recently. Due to some timetabling issues, I had to organize for some students to take the finals early, but still within finals week. The dates were mutually agreed.

One of these early final takers was very upset when I stopped them writing at the 2 hours and ten minutes mark after starting (for a 2 hour exam). After they gave me their paper, they looked very upset and stomped out of the room.

They performed poorly on the exam but eked out a D overall for the class.

The fastest student in the class finished in about 45 minutes; the majority were done by 90 minutes. I don't usually set time-critical midterms or finals.

When the student was upset, I didn't respond at the time nor did I follow-up with them afterwards via email or in person.

Should I have done anything more? If so, what?

I believe that college should be about more than just grades, and wanted to give the feedback to this student that their behavior was extremely unprofessional.

I would not intervene unless I felt the student was at risk of harming themselves or others.

As you say, college is about more than grades, learning how to handle failure is part of life.

Moreover it’s not unlikely that their performance on the final was the icing on the cake: they had a bad day/week and were upset about all of it plus the final.

Unless you’re willing to allow them to retake the exam (which is probably a bad idea unless they offer a good reason), reaching out to them and telling them they should deal better with exams will likely annoy them and demotivate them further.

It may well be that the student was upset due to frustration with their own performance and had nothing to do with you or with being cut off. Their actions may not reflect unprofessional behavior as much as just immaturity. Frustration often boils over into anger and the anger is often misplaced. You may have experienced this yourself, actually.

I don't think you need to be proactive here, though it is fine if you want to be. But your best response is to just listen, even if it is to a rant. If you think that some encouragement is needed you could give that, as well as offering to give suggestions on how to do better in such courses.

But you can leave the next move to them, I think.

Students get upset all the time and the best way is to let it happen. Unless there is something statistically wrong with your exam - i.e. everybody gets a really low mark - there is really nothing to be said or done: there's no reason to believe this is not habitual on the part of the student.

What can be done on your part is keep all records relating to the change in scheduling, if you have such records.

It is normal for exams to have time limits.

It is also normal for exams to be stressful for students, and thus I would not worry much about a minor lack of professionalism in this context.