After teaching undergrads for a few years, here’s a write up of several interactions I’ve had with them.
First, some background:
I have two University emails: an employee one and a student one. I only ever tell students to contact me at the employee address should they have any questions and never once have I mentioned the student address.
I gave students the instructions that they must turn in a physical copy of their physics lab report into my mailbox which is in the Physics Department office by a certain date. This office is in the aptly named Physics Building.
Now, let’s begin:
A student emails me (at the student address) a day after the due date saying they searched the Geology building, the Mining building, the Computer Science building and Engineering buildings but could not find my mailbox. They’ve also attached their lab report to the email because they’re in a hurry.
Had another student who emailed me saying they found the Department office but had no clue what to do, and so attached the report to the email.
Had a group of students who got in trouble for copying lab reports. I sent them down to the Lab Coordinator, whose office is in the same hallway as the lab room is and just two doors down. The students came back after two minutes saying they could not find the office. I repeat that it is down the hallway two doors down, tell them the room number and state it’s labeled “lab coordinator” next to it. They leave and come back again, saying they can’t find it. A third time they said they found it but said he wasn’t there. I then personally escort them down to his office for their fourth time and find that he is there, has been there this whole time and his door is wide open. The students are surprised because this was not the door they went to.
One student emailed me 7 days after grades were due for the semester. He asked me to change his grade as “It would really help out my final GPA.” Even after telling him that the grades couldn’t be changed he was insistent that it could. Perhaps after certain forms are filled out and reviewed by a committee but certainly not by me and most certainly not for that reason. He didn’t even offer to do anything for extra points.
A student asked me why I had taken off points. I said that my reasons are written all over his report. This took around 7 minutes of him not getting it and me repeating this multiple times before he finally realized that my reasons for taking off points were written on his report.
One student became furious at me, swore at me and finally stomped out of the room because I had taken off one point. Later on in the semester he stopped turning in reports and then finally dropped the course entirely. I was rather amused by his intense growth of apathy.
And here are some answers I got from some students:
At least they showed their work
The first and last values are already calculated, you’d think that would inform the student that the correct answers would decrease going down the table.
You can’t have one billionth of a bubble
This question told you the average radius of a CO2 bubble produced by an Alka-Seltzer tablet and how liters of CO2 gas one table can generate – it asked how many bubbles you’d get from several tablets.
This implies a single drop of water would kill you
You’d actually die from hyper-hydration long before you drank enough fluoridated water to get a lethal dose of fluorine.
Whaley
I totally harpooned that whale.
Orthallelous 
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