A student has been scoring in the 60s and 70s in a class where the average score on the tests is in the mid-70s. He’s not failing, but he won’t be getting a great grade, either.

He doesn’t come to class or office hours. He submits homework only intermittently. He tells me that he’s too busy with projects for other classes. He also tells me, verbatim, “… I focus more on higher levels of abstraction, which makes it harder for me to work with low-level [material].”

He’s blowing off my course; fine. But this student is full of $hit, and I hope he knows it. Otherwise, I worry about him, for this big head of his will result in a pain in the neck. There’s no such thing as being too cool for low-level stuff before you’ve actually shown mastery of said low-level stuff. Nobody who’s ever mastered anything would buy this, and I can’t believe that’s what he’s selling.