My vampire came in the form of a master's student I inherited from a
departing colleague. The student was in her final year, and my colleague
explained that she was weak but a hard worker. Early in the fall
semester, I took home a draft of her thesis, made some coffee, and
started reading. As is typical in my field in the humanities, the thesis
was long—close to 200 pages. I didn't get far before my heart sank: It
was riddled with errors, from the small-but-jarring to the
large-and-jaw-dropping. I made comments in the margins. I came up with
suggestions. Working on her thesis was so slow-going that I spent a long
day doing nothing else.
A few days later I met with the student and asked for her opinion of
her thesis. She said she was too close to it to have an opinion. I took a
deep breath and told her she was far from ready to defend. She looked
dismayed but seemed to take my comments to heart, not taking notes, but
listening and at times asking for clarification. Since she'd failed her
comprehensive exam the previous year, I also advised her to sit in on a
graduate course I was teaching, and to come to my office hours with
practice exam responses for us to go over. The task ahead of her was
daunting. Still, we had a plan, and the spring was a long way off.
As the weeks passed, we met to look over her revised thesis chapters,
but the conversations had a curious sense of déjà vu about them. I
would make comments similar to ones I'd made before, and she would
listen but never take notes. I would remind her about sitting in on my
course and writing practice exam responses, and she would nod and tell
me she was planning to.
Before long February came around, and with it the comprehensive exam.
My student failed again. To make matters worse, the next full draft of
her thesis had new problems for every old one she'd resolved. I put it
to her, gently, that finishing the degree might be beyond her.
In some distress, she asked if that meant defending a couple of months late.
No, I said.
Next year then?
I started talking about her options if she left the program, but here
the conversation took an unanticipated turn: She insisted she would
succeed and told me I had to believe in her. Encouraging her to quit,
she said, would only make her more determined.
I replayed our conversation in my head for some nights afterward. Had
I been unclear? Had I not conveyed the magnitude of the problems with
her thesis—not to mention her failing her exam? But I countered: I'd
given her a detailed evaluation of where her thesis was coming up short.
I'd been plain that it wasn't in a state ready to defend—far from it!
Staring at the dark shapes of the trees outside my window, I imagined
future conversations in which I would define the problems more starkly
and somehow more convincingly. But in person, those conversations went
less smoothly: She asked me over and over to believe in her, and grew
teary when I told her that serving as her thesis adviser wasn't a matter
of belief.
It was clear that I needed to take action. I looked into the
procedures for dismissing a graduate student. But as it turned out, the
student would need a warning with specific goals to attain and a whole
semester to meet them, so dismissal was certainly no fast-track to
relief.
As I considered the 40 hours I had already devoted to my vampire
student, with no end in sight, I felt my blood pressure mounting. This
student might be with me for another semester and would require
continued thesis advising. Plus, she was now asking for weekly meetings
to help her prepare for the (as yet distant) third sitting of her exam—a
request I was deflecting. At times, mostly in secret and to my shame, I
imagined resigning as her chair. One day I let slip that wish to a
colleague who looked horrified and begged me not to.
Along the way I discussed my vampire student with colleagues who
bemoaned our department's lack of rules governing how many times a
student could sit the comprehensive exam, and our need for a way to
counsel students out of the program. Everyone was sympathetic, and my
determination to deal with my vampire student fairly but firmly wasn't
disputed—quite the opposite.
What was disputed was where to fix the point of no return. Like so
many departments, mine has a culture of expecting that faculty members
will make every effort to ensure that students are given the support
they need to do well, and such a culture seems appropriate and caring.
It was also keeping me in a bind. Colleagues pointed out that my student
had improved somewhat, and maybe with more help she could write a
passable thesis.
Besides, she was in her third year and we'd let her stay this long
and had taken her money, so wasn't she within her rights to assume she
was going to get her degree? Such comments stuck with me and only made
me feel worse for plotting to push her out of the program. Now I
wondered if I was rushing things along because of my own frustrations
with her and her demands on my time.
In retrospect, it took me too long to understand that I needed an
opinion from someone beyond my department. It was April before I sought
out a colleague with expertise in dealing with problem students but who
knew nothing of my particular vampire student. I felt a little nervous
sitting in his overheated office: It's no small matter to admit to
wanting to dismiss a graduate student, not least because I knew it could
reflect back on me as an incompetent or malicious adviser.
Instead, my colleague's reaction surprised me. He exclaimed, "Our
university can't afford to have you put that amount of time into one
student. You've worked with her on her thesis, you've offered support
that she didn't use—plus most people would take failing comps twice as a
sign that it's time to go." We talked through what I could say to her,
and when, and what should go in writing. The guilt of what earlier had
seemed to be heartless plotting against a helpless but energy-draining
foe vanished.
No one in my department had told me I was wrong to pursue dismissing
the student. No one had taken issue with my appraisal of the problems in
her thesis. But too often what seemed to intrude was personal knowledge
of the student and what her reaction to being dismissed might be:
Surely we could do just a little more to help her.
I understood. The student had sobbed in my office, and the memory of
it unnerved me. What I had needed was someone who hadn't met this
student, who hadn't seen her cry at failing the exam, who saw the
situation in a cold but clear light.
At heart, the case of the vampire student wasn't just a matter of a
student's terrible disappointment bumping up against a faculty member's
exasperation. It was about determining the boundary where faculty
responsibility should meet student responsibility, and the costs of
letting that border drift.
Anne Herbert is the pseudonym of an associate professor in the humanities at a public university in the West.
By Anne Herbert