Academic Failures

One thing about academic life that I have never experienced anywhere else is the false sense of failure. By this I mean I have never endured so much stress about failing a class in my life but then end up passing with flying colors. How could this be? Is this even fair? For the +/- system, the difference between a B- and an A in a class is a difference of a whole 1.33 grade points for a class (when out of a 4.0 based GPA system). So, is it fair for someone to have a B- and end the course with an A?
I am here to say no. Though, there is a catch. As with anything such as a student’s success in school, there are many factors which affect the outcome. I want to focus on the purpose of an instructor and the duties of the student in University.

A Student’s Role

As a student, you may decide on a major at some point in your academic career. This does not have to be something you are bounded by blood to, but it is something which peaks your interest for the time being and you will be spending four more years (if you just do undergraduate) of your life accomplishing this task. If you are anything like me, I wanted to attend university to help understand these complex concepts which seemed to be absolutely foreign to me and the rest of all the resources I had (not including the ones I was naive to notice). Then with these concepts you learn, you may choose to do something great with the skills you learn. Whether you decide to go into industry/public sector, loop back into academics and teach, or move to something more hobbyist oriented and do your own personal investments and work, these goals are usually what I have seen people set their goals to; these are all amazing goals and are all things which influenced my decision to go to university.
Something as a student, maybe even as a word of advice, I would suggest is to find your groove. This sounds funny but it is true. Adapting to the flow of how university works is much different than community college (JC) or high-school despite some courses being taught at both CC and Uni. The culture of the students, including work ethic, expectations of professors, and expectations of fellow peers varies greatly depending where you are attending school (This concept can also be applied to work places too so feel free to replace anything here with “my job/coworkers/bosses”). Once you understand your groove, you will be able to learn easier and work with others more efficiently. As with most things in life, self learning is very important, even in university; finding your groove, flow, what have you, will help you balance this weird difference between learning from professors/class and on your own from personal research.
This leads into my next point, as a student, you are responsible for your educational experience. Remember how I mentioned some people, despite paying thousands of dollars for classes, still slack off? It becomes a prime example of my aforementioned point. They will not receive the same education as someone who is not only engaged in class but actively trying to apply the concepts learned and even discover more on their own outside of class. Being the now vice president of ASU’s CTF/Hacking club pwndevils and a member of ASU’s Devilsec leadership, I see many variations and skill levels of students who come in (even as seniors) and fail to know much of what some would consider basics of computer science (this does not include the edge cases of those students who actually are not CS/CSE/COMPUTER majors). We can push the blame on the education system the university provides however, as students in an ever-changing field, we also need to adapt. Like many of my peers, I have also been victim of believing I can just join university and they will teach me everything I will need to know to be successful in my career; this thought is sadly misleading and gravely wrong. The fact the thought is such a mislead is partly why I wanted to join these two cybersecurity clubs on campus and not only help improve and hone my skills, but help others who are in the same boat if not even worse catch up to speed and help them also be successful when they are ready for an internship or a position in the industry. To add one more point to this thought, in the field of cybersecurity and computer science (and many others at this point) you can find many resources on YouTube, Google, IEE, OWASP, Codeacademy, etc.
The list goes on. All of these resources and more are usually free (or have some free version) to use and are just as good to get you started and launched into learning the skills which you will not learn in university classes. As a University student, you will get the most out of the clubs you join, the people you meet, the projects you work on in your personal time, the concepts you learn, and how you apply the knowledge you learn in your classes. This will not only help you be more successful, but it will also help you truly understand what you want to do in your future career post/pre graduation from University.

A Professor’s Role

This is a hard role to analyze. I commend everything professors do and for taking the role that they have as it is not an easy role. In the face of many, many, many students and ontop of that they may have research projects or an actual job to manage as well is no easy feat.
With this being said, I will analyze how I feel a professor should help aid a student in learning.
For the students who join your class, they want to hear what novel things you have to say. They do not always want to hear what the most popular electrical engineering Youtuber has to say, they want to hear what wacky finding you discovered while pulling apart a transistor (or something like that you know?). That of course is probably over the top. The point I am getting at is this is your class and they want your teaching of the course because you are not only the subject matter expert in the room but you are also a mentor and a liaison who has novel ideas which many of these students look up to you for. As a student though, many of us are picky. We also do not want to be bored. Though I would presume, being a student yourself at some point you understand this. So make it exciting! You choose this major for crying out loud, why did you choose it? You obviously had some motive which excited you at some point. If you do not have that excitement any more, then please do not teach. It is such a harsh phrase, I understand, but, if you are going to ever instill knowledge in your students and help them learn to become also amazing engineers, artists, or scientists, then you need to help them thrive off of their passion as well. Make some component of your class touch every student and make them excited about the topic. If you run an information assurance class, don’t just talk about encryption, how attacks happen, or best privacy practices; that is super boring. Instead, let them hack! Show them techniques for breaking a Vigenère cipher or how to cause a buffer overflow on an application! That, is super exciting. Are you an electrical engineering teacher teaching basic circuits class? Break out the kits! Allow whole class participation on how to make a circuit. Even most boring concepts can be made interesting if you have an entire class input on the content. Though this comes back to the passion too! Students will not participate if you do not seem enthusiastic about the topics.
A helpful concept too, also maybe controversial(?), record your lectures. Please oh please record your lectures. This helps students in many ways than one. I know for me, I am usually that student who is working himself to the bone and is so tired in classes and sometimes cannot write good notes to save my life. Lecture recordings help for not only reviewing for tests but so I can also re-write my notes later to help better understand the concepts taught that day. The process of uploading is super simple too if you use a program like Zoom which will provide you a cloud link you can share with students only. Many other professors such as professor Adam Doupe of Arizona State University records every one of his lectures and uploads them to the public listing on his Youtube channel. This not only helps the students but the overall community of aspiring cybersecurity students all over the globe. Imagine having an impact on more students than those in your own class.
Two last big hitting points, you all may have research. This is usually novel and amazing research that maybe no one has ever done before, congrats! Though, please do not leave us students in the dust. We, truly want to learn (and we also paid for the course ;p ) so please provide some content to us and you will have good results. Give us your time and effort and we will give you ours, however, if you leave us in the dust for research, you will see poor performance usually. Last, listen to your students. A thing I notice alot from professors is their inability to accept feedback. Sometimes I understand if it is from students which tend to come off offensive than constructive however, some professors fail to believe they are wrong in any case. This is a poor poor way to teach in my book. My university even asks the students for a professor review at the end of the semester, so why shouldnt the professor just hear the feedback during the course to help the flow of the course? It would be more effective and help with the strain of the students and the professor equally. To the professors which do this, thank you very much and yall are some special gems in my mind and have greatly helped me succeed in my academic career.

Relating Back

So is it fair for someone with a B- to have an A at the end of the semester? No. I find this because professors who tend to do much of the problems listed above will compensate for the failures of students by raising grades so their performance looks good. This is not how academics should be taught. Yes it is good for the student so they do not have to waste more money, but now the students who worked their hardest do not always differ on paper from those who did not try as hard. Furthermore, the students did not perform to their full potential (or in the eyes of the department) and the professor felt it was necessary to raise grades manually or lower thresholds. In many cases this can be the reason attributed for why many students leaving University are either greatly unprepared for the working force, or have no idea how to properly learn. No one pushed them to learn how to or made it a necessity to know how to learn on their own or from the mentor in the front of the class.
While I am blessed for making my way to my senior semesters with decent grades, I do not feel like I deserved them all with the grading schemes provided altered by professors who could not teach/facilitate a course which enriched a student’s knowledge past taking a test.

Signing Off

Thank you for reading my rant (bless your soul if you made it through this). I am off to start my senior capstone and internship this summer semester. I also wanted to say a congratulations to Shellphish for qualifying for DEFCON CTF Finals! We did it guys, let’s kick more CTF butt and get that bread!!!! Till next time, be sure to learn, learn, learn. It is all in front of you, just gotta open your eyes :)