The Dog Ate My Flash Drive Analysis

Students are forcing the reduction of their teachers' performance expectations. When teachers begin their careers, they hope to shape the minds of future leaders as they equip students with thinking skills. College professors instruct hundreds of students every term, often with only that one opportunity to influence each of them. In the process of teaching, instructors see students pushing beyond the limits of reason, and it tests their mettle. Two teachers have written essays about their experiences in light of these challenges. Ellen Laird's "I'm Your Teacher, Not Your Internet-Service Provider" and Carolyn Foster Segal's "The Dog Ate My Flash Drive, and Other Tales of Woe" share similar assessments on teaching college students. Each author serves as an English professor, stylistically relating the trials of dealing with students' misbehaviors, but representing perspectives from different learning environments. Both Laird and Segal teach College Composition, a freshman level course required of most students in when they first begin college. These authors teach students in a traditional setting, meeting face-to-face with students at established class times. Professor Laird also instructs online-only sections of the same College Composition course she teaches in person. Segal, an instructor at Cedar Crest College in
Segal and Laird are not addressing college students in their writing, but students would benefit from reading these essays, and not just for entertainment. Both authors present the perspectives of English professors, but from different learning environments. Each stylistically relates the woes of dealing with students' misbehaviors, incorporating humor to keep their readers engaged. Not taking themselves too seriously seems to have helped these authors keep wanting to invest in new students, and so far, have not yielded to the evil forces and compromised their