Following up on the discussion of teaching evaluations, I thought I’d mention courses that tend, in my experience, to be more prone to getting bad course evaluations. By “prone to getting bad course evaluations,” I mean that these courses, independent of how well they are taught, or how well the students retain the information, are nonetheless likely to be low-rated for other reasons. Today, I’d like to introduce gateway courses
There are more undergraduates planning to go to medical school than there are openings in said medical schools. Institutions don’t want to graduate a lot of pre-med majors who will never be able to get into an onshore medical school. The result, at many undergraduate institutions, is the gateway course. This is a course, coming early on in the student’s undergraduate existence, that is designed to weed out people who aren’t really committed to becoming doctors, or who don’t have the skills necessary to thrive in medical school. Some professor is given the job of designing a course so unrelentingly hard, so horrifically evil, so sadistically impossible to get a good grade, that all the excited young first years whose mommy and daddy had dreamed of them being a top-flight surgeon suddenly discover the wonders of Public Policy.At Cornell (where I did my undergraduate work) that course was Chemistry 207 (note the number of labs to get a sense of the enrollment; contrast that with later Chemistry courses). Chem 207 came early in the medical school requirements and more people foundered on its rocks than even on naturally evil courses like Statistics. Chem 207 was one of those legendary courses that was spoken about only in whispers. After the first set of midterm exams (‘prelims’) came more heavy drinking than almost any other night of the year, but in a glum “I have to change my identity and flee the country so my parents won’t be disappointed in me” kind of way. The result was exactly as Cornell intended: lots and lots of students switched majors and many fewer graduates applied to medical school.
As a undergraduate history major my only connection with Chem 207 was in commiserating with my friends who took it. That is, until senior year. That year, in mid-December, I was sitting in the Uris Library Fish Bowl studying when I noticed another student across the room trying to push his chemistry textbook into his backpack. He was failing and becoming increasingly agitated. Finally, he gave up, and heaved the offending textbook against the wall. “@%@#$%@%! Chem 207,” he said loudly. “*(&&)(*( med school,” he said louder. “I*^&*& this *&(&*(&!” he said even louder, heaved his backpack after the textbook, and stormed from the room. There was a cautious smattering of applause and then we went back to studying. Finals were coming up, after all.
You can imagine what kind of student evaluations the course gets. I offer these. Or these. Or these. Contrast that with the ratings that Chem 208 gets here. That course, the successor to 207, is largely comprised of 207-veterans who have survived and prospered. Everything after 207 is, relatively speaking, cake.
Chemistry 207 will likely never get good reviews. Gateway courses are aimed at dissatisfying the majority of their students, and the evaluations suffer accordingly But 207 serves its purpose in ensuring that graduates who apply to medical school will have a solid chance of getting in, and those who would not have that solid chance will find out early. But that kind of long-term view is not captured by the each-course-its-own-island nature of student evaluations and it illustrates that, despite Ezra Klein’s insistences, sometimes the customer is not only not right, but, in fact, has to be wrong.
65 comments
January 15, 2009 at 8:43 am
Vance
Of course the low ceiling on medical school admissions is not just a law of nature, but in its turn exists for a reason. This doesn’t change your final point, really, just puts in question the value of the gating work done by these classes. (The brave professors putting their RMP ratings at risk by teaching these premedophages are helping prop up doctors’ salaries, and by extension the cost of the American health care system.)
January 15, 2009 at 8:45 am
Barry
There was an anecdote from Harvard Business School, where a student was telling a staff member, ‘Why aren’t you making me happy?! I’m your customer!’, to which the staff member said ‘No, you’re product’.
January 15, 2009 at 8:53 am
Russell Belding
But, is their such a thing as a gateway course in the humanities?
January 15, 2009 at 8:55 am
AcademicLurker
I’m surprised that the weeder course at Cornell is General Chemistry. At most schools, Organic Chemistry is the designated “Crush the premeds, drive them before you and hear the lamentations of the sophomores!” course.
January 15, 2009 at 8:55 am
Vance
Try this, though they seem to use the term in analogy to “gateway drug”.
January 15, 2009 at 9:18 am
silbey
premedophages are helping prop up doctors’ salaries, and by extension the cost of the American health care system.
Lovely word, that: premedophages.
And yes, your point is a good one, and I think reinforces my larger point about external forces affecting teaching.
But, is their such a thing as a gateway course in the humanities?
Every One Of My Courses. Grrr.
*blink*
Sorry, I let my inner crusty-old-professor shine through there for a moment.
Gateway courses for the humanities tend to be aimed at pre-law students.
January 15, 2009 at 9:43 am
Ezra
In my experience at Cornell, it was Orgo that crushed people’s spirits.
January 15, 2009 at 9:53 am
kid bitzer
here at midwest u., we use “gateway” as stanford does in vance’s link, i.e. to mean a popular allurement to attract students to the major.
what silbey is describing, i might rather term a “gatekeeper” course than a “gateway” course. or perhaps a “bouncer” course.
still, strait is the gate, and narrow is the way.
January 15, 2009 at 10:13 am
JPool
Macalester had intro courses in History and a couple of the social science departments (particularly Anthropology and Poli Sci) that were meant to be halfway between gateway and gatekeeper courses. They weren’t intended to crush the spirits of aspiring anthropologists or whathaveyou, but to discourage dilletants and give some therotical and methodological training for what was to come.
January 15, 2009 at 10:14 am
ben wolfson
I have always just heard “weedout” for silbey-gateway.
January 15, 2009 at 10:22 am
Russell Belding
I didn’t mean disrespect to the humanities, being a fine product of such an education myself (except for not knowing how to spell “there”). Was just curious as to what such an animal would look like. Maybe it’s the course that says “if you don’t like this, you won’t like what comes after. Maybe you should try another career.”
January 15, 2009 at 10:32 am
silbey
In my experience at Cornell, it was Orgo that crushed people’s spirits.
Interesting…things may have changed before/after my years there.
what silbey is describing, i might rather term a “gatekeeper” course than a “gateway” course. or perhaps a “bouncer” course.
I’ve always heard it described “gateway”, but “gatekeeper” might work better. I’ve heard “weedout” as well.
I didn’t mean disrespect to the humanities
None taken. There are pre-law weedout (aha!) courses as well, though I don’t know of one that was a specifically fearsome as 207.
(By the way, I should note that this is not just a selfless act on Cornell (or other institutions’) part. They don’t want their graduates going to med/law school and failing out, because that affects Cornell’s reputation.)
January 15, 2009 at 11:16 am
Baaaa
I actually went to UCD with the intention of going pre-vet. I am a wiz when it comes to biology, but completely suck at chemistry, ergo was “weeded out” by organic chem, and got my degree in Poli Sci instead. Talking with several vets, they acknowledged that organic chem was a gateway course, but thought that was sort of a mistake because you don’t really use all that much complex chemistry in medicine unless you end up going into pharmacology. My own opinion is that by making a chemistry class rather than I biological class into the gatekeeper class, you wind up with people who are less living-thing oriented since chemistry people tend (and I know this is a gross generalization, but also something I have found to be true in my life experience) to be better at dealing with substances than people and/or critters. One of the things I find kind of funny is that I always wanted to be a livestock veterinarian, and there’s a tremendous shortage of those graduating these days (last year UCD graduated one, this year they’ll probably graduate nine).
Even without the schooling, I have ended up doing a good deal of tasks that a vet would have to do by deciding to breed and raise a type of livestock most vets either know nothing about or refuse to deal with. So, now I have to know *more* about my livestock than most newly graduated vet students do. Ha! Take that O-Chem! You thought you’d have the last word on my life aspirations, but who is laughing now, hmmmmm? Bwha-ha-ha-ha!
Erm, back to the subject at hand- I think the gate-keeper class for Poli-Sci must have been the one where we had to read most of the Federalist Papers. I love to read, I love policy, I love history, and for me that was like eating sawdust. So dry. So difficult to keep mind from wandering. Must. Keep. Eyes. Open….
January 15, 2009 at 11:23 am
Sir Charles
I am particuarly grateful that the students who complains of the “mad hard testsm” will not in the future be examining my prostate. Or at least not in a doctor’s office.
By the way silbey, by the custom of all internet traditions, one should use the actual curse words.
January 15, 2009 at 11:37 am
ari
What sort of animals do you raise, Baaaa? Are they cute? Tasty? Or both?
And Charles, this is a family-friendly blog. No FCC fines for us.
January 15, 2009 at 11:52 am
Jason B.
In my experience at Cornell, it was Orgo that crushed people’s spirits.
Let me guess. “Orgo” is the name of the troll who lives under the Obscure-Famous-Person-Memorial Student Union.
January 15, 2009 at 12:11 pm
chingona
We had a weedout course at my journalism school, which is funny because I don’t consider journalism to be exactly rigourous, from an academic perspective. The main barrier it presented to freshmen is that it met at 7:30 a.m., but they also would fail you on any assignment that contained any factual error, even if it was clearly a typo.
January 15, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Carl
I’m with JPool that the humanities gateways are largely about triageing the dilettantes and bootcamping some theory/methods. And I’m with Silbey that in some sense all humanities classes do/should do this, at various levels.
In History in my experience there are two typical weedees. The first is the high school historian. It’s an earnest data sponge who got good grades and praise for soaking up all sorts of trivia, then splashing it back out when squeezed. The second is the enthused autodidact. This one thinks because you’ve got a doctorate in History you’re going to share its exhaustive knowledge and excitement about the average rate of fire of every weapon used in the second battle of Bull Run. Variants include the historical reenacter and the barstool conspiracy theorist.
Obviously there’s more than a little kinship. Usually you give these types a whiff of epistemology and source assessment and they’re, um, history.
January 15, 2009 at 12:57 pm
TF Smith
Shouldn’t historiography at the undergraduate level be the the gatekeeper for history majors?
Or should it be the foreign language requirement?
January 15, 2009 at 1:32 pm
silbey
We may be talking about several different types of gateways. There’s the administration mandated gateway (Dean: “We graduated 322 pre-meds last year. 22 of them got into medical school. Make it stop.” Chair: “Minion! Teach thou the intro biology/orgo chem/random early course and make it verily as hard as Satan’s heart.” Eager Assistant Professor: “Forsooth, I shall remain forever untenured because of the resulting student evaluations!” Chair: “No, I sayeth! The Dean and I have a winketh and nod about this particular course. Two more articles in a peer-reviewed journal and you shall join the ranks of the napping, er, tenured.”) and the department mandated gateway (Faculty: “Our classes overflow with students who are not historians but mere reciters of fact!” Faculty (to themselves): “Bring on the historiography!”)
It’s also possible I’ve had too much coffee this afternoon.
January 15, 2009 at 2:17 pm
ben
talking with several vets, they acknowledged that organic chem was a gateway course, but thought that was sort of a mistake because you don’t really use all that much complex chemistry in medicine unless you end up going into pharmacology.
Yeah, according to my dr. father, you don’t really need much science at all to practice medicine; that O-chem is used to weed people is probably partially a function of the prestige that requiring a so-called “harder” science than biology lends to the profession. Doctors make way too much money to be craftspeople!
January 15, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Baaaa
Ari- I raise Nigerian Dwarf Goats which are so cute that few people taste them. Also, small enough that the work-to-taste ratio is pretty high (consuming them is sort of like dining on quail- tastes good, but a heck of a lot of work to get there), so few people raise them for that. They produce a lot of milk (I have a 20 inch tall doe who produces a half gallon of milk a day) for their size, so they’re my little milking machines. Most vets get about a day of lecture on goats, the majority of equine vets won’t touch them, and the rest of the livestock vets are working on factory farms. I also have llamas, which are another one of those critters vets don’t know much about, but they’ve had very few “issues” since they just hang out and keep the goats safe.
ben- your comment (about craftspeople) made me chuckle, especially thinking about how the social science fields have contorted themselves to look more “science-y” in order to attempt to be taken more seriously. My father was a chemist and made the conscious decision to go into chemistry for the very reason that he didn’t like having to deal with lots of people day in and day out.
January 15, 2009 at 4:22 pm
ari
Goats are cute, though my wife is scared of them (butting incident during childhood*). And llamas are really among the nicest creatures I’ve ever encountered. Is your farm near Davis? Do you allow visitors to come visit and pet the critters? Am I overstepping (if so, just don’t answer, as I don’t mean to be creepy)?
* No, she did not butt the goat; the goat butted her. Trauma.
January 15, 2009 at 4:30 pm
TF Smith
Mmm, goats….slashlik!
January 15, 2009 at 4:36 pm
teofilo
Geez, did anyone here not go to Cornell?
Anyway, when I was there I recall Chem 207 being the main weedout class for premeds, although people complained a lot about orgo too; there may have been two gates. The background to this is that for a variety of reasons Cornell gets a lot of premeds. About half of the people I knew freshman year started out as premed. No exaggeration. The gatekeeping measures around the premed requirements are therefore extremely harsh, perhaps more so than most places.
January 15, 2009 at 4:39 pm
teofilo
I also have llamas, which are another one of those critters vets don’t know much about, but they’ve had very few “issues” since they just hang out and keep the goats safe.
Interesting. There’s someone over at Pueblo Pintado that has a llama, presumably to herd their sheep. I saw it on my way back from visiting the ruins there and was surprised, though I had heard they make good herders.
January 15, 2009 at 4:48 pm
kid bitzer
“Geez, did anyone here not go to Cornell?”
yes.
i have heard rumours that it gets cold there.
January 15, 2009 at 4:56 pm
teofilo
It does, yes.
January 15, 2009 at 5:12 pm
TF Smith
Also, yes…Cornell was out of my league, financially and academically – and, climatically. Bremerton was too cold for me.
Always thought well of Cornell because of Sagan, though…
January 15, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Ahistoricality
I did not go to Cornell, though I worked two summers for a researcher who did, and who referred to all other Ivies as “[city name] Community College.”
Ironically, most history departments think of the World History survey — which is widely used as a Gen Ed course — as a “gateway”, an opportunity to bring people into history, but it actually serves more as a “gatekeeper” because the absurd mass of material scares away students and gives a completely false impression of what other history courses entail.
January 15, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Baaaa
ari- the farm is near Davis, yes we do allow visitors, and we’d be happy to have you and yours over to pet the critters. Our goats are very well behaved, only head butt each other, and about as far from intimidating as possible. I’ll try to send an e-mail privately so the rest of the blog doesn’t show up at the farm and completely freak out the border collie puppy. And the husband.
Teofilo- the llamas I have are to protect the goats from roving dogs and coyotes. It’s amazing how many people let their dogs run free in the country, and it is amazing how quickly Fido the Gentle will turn into Fido the Killer when it comes across random farm animals. Llamas can become protective of the small ruminants they are with, so that’s why we have them- ours couldn’t move a herd with a map and good motivation- but that’s why there are border collies.
January 15, 2009 at 8:33 pm
teofilo
Interesting. So the llamas are a supplement to the dogs, rather than a replacement.
January 15, 2009 at 8:37 pm
ari
If you’re going to e-mail, you can use my work address: akelman AT yooseedavis DOT edu. And now that I hear you have a border collie pup, I’m even more likely to come by. We’ve got one of our own — now six months — and we’re always eager to see others.
January 15, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Baaaa
teofilio- well, yes and no. I needed some sort of livestock guardian, and depending on what sort of predator you are up against, most people either choose a livestock guardian dog or a llama. I chose llamas because they eat what the goats eat, they don’t bark, and they don’t bite (though their spitting abilities are legendary). So in that case, I got the llamas instead of a dog. But, goats must be moved, and occasionally caught, and dogs are really the only ones who will do the job.
January 15, 2009 at 9:09 pm
ari
Dwarf goats iz cute.
January 15, 2009 at 9:18 pm
dana
I didn’t know llamas were guardians. That’s kind of cool.
January 15, 2009 at 9:23 pm
ari
We station seven in a perimeter around our house. Keeps the riff-raff away.
January 15, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Baaaa
The cuteness can reach painful levels during kidding season.
January 15, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Cosma
naturally evil courses like Statistics
Hey now!
— When I was a graduate student in physics at UW, we called them weed-out courses, and they were Physics 103 and 104; though I think o. chem. was also a weed-out. I really hated TAing them, because the students knew they were weed-out courses and were Not Happy; also, they were non-calculus based physics, which basically meant we had to do a lot of lying and presenting formulas as incantations. Teaching the engineers was infinitely better.
January 15, 2009 at 11:35 pm
Brad
Teaching the engineers was infinitely better.
That is a sentence I never expected to see….
January 16, 2009 at 5:14 am
silbey
Hey now!
I was waiting for someone to react to that. Heh.
I really hated TAing them, because the students knew they were weed-out courses and were Not Happy;
How were your evaluations?
January 16, 2009 at 6:34 am
Deborah
Interesting to think that universities would actually engineer certain majors to lower the numbers. If this is the case why not decrease the number of education majors since there are no teaching jobs, economics majors since all the financial firms are laying people off, art majors since there’s no way to get an art job.
Could it be that chemistry, physics etc. is just hard, and that many students just can’t hack it? Is there anyone here who actually teaches one of these courses and can attest to being asked to make it a course to weed students out??
(course, I’m a former successful chemistry major, so I’m just sayin’ …)
(and, Ben, please, like bio is even nearly as difficult as chem!)
January 16, 2009 at 6:54 am
kid bitzer
couldn’t universities design courses that used llamas to keep out students?
sure, deborah; chemistry and physics are hard. but there are harder and easier ways to teach them.
is chem harder than bio? what does that even mean? typically, intro bio courses cover less difficult material than intro chem courses. you get to the difficult stuff in bio later.
but that’s a matter of pedagogy. if you wanted to make an intro bio course harder than any intro chem course that is currently taught in america, there’d be no problem doing that. if you wanted to design an intro chem course that was easier than the average intro bio course, there’d be no problem doing that, either.
but, you know, to claim that bio itself (as a discipline? at the graduate level?) is easier than chem itself–that just seems like a strange claim to make. pretty soon the biologists will be telling you that really good biologists know all that trivial chem stuff, *and* they also apply it in complex systems.
we get into enough of these pissing matches over in the humanities–it’s pointless.
January 16, 2009 at 6:56 am
dana
At my undergrad, they treated bio as a weedout course for pre-meds. The guy imperiously defended making it a weedout course, and admitted it, because “you might cut someone open and find they don’t look like the book.”
Many students couldn’t hack it, but the course was designed so that anyone who couldn’t hack it on their own was going to get a C (and thus have a Bad Grade on their med school transcript.)
Interesting to think that universities would actually engineer certain majors to lower the numbers.
You seem to find this surprising, but as near as I can tell, it’s not about lowering the number of majors in some cases, but about preserving the school’s medical school acceptance rate. The assumption is that someone who can’t make it in intro bio is someone who is not going to get into med school (because the remaining courses are harder and they won’t have the grades), and it’s better for the student if they find that out now rather than four years from now.
Quite a lot of the attrition is just because bio and chem are *hard*, but it’s certainly not the case that if you asked me to maximize retention I’d start by putting 300 students in a lecture hall three times a week. (MIT is changing how they teach intro physics for these sorts of reasons.)
I don’t really like the logic behind weedout courses, because while it does channel some non-committed people into something that isn’t medicine, I often wonder if we’re misidentifying talent.
January 16, 2009 at 6:56 am
AcademicLurker
Chemistry, physics & etc. can be hard, but the boot camp approach taken in classes like Organic Chem. seems to deliberately make things harder.
In my O. Chem. course, exams routinely had median scores of 25 out of 100, and they were held on Saturday mornings because the instructor wanted all of the official class time dedicated to lectures.
January 16, 2009 at 7:00 am
ari
Has the blog’s font changed? And the color scheme? I find myself outraged by the appearance of the thing. But then I find myself doubting my outrage. Where’s Eric? He’ll know.
January 16, 2009 at 7:04 am
kid bitzer
no, ari. nothing has changed. nothing at all.
are you feeling all right? perhaps you need to see a doctor.
January 16, 2009 at 7:11 am
silbey
Interesting to think that universities would actually engineer certain majors to lower the numbers. If this is the case why not decrease the number of education majors since there are no teaching jobs, economics majors since all the financial firms are laying people off, art majors since there’s no way to get an art job.
The difference, I think, is that there are established constituencies (the med schools and the law schools) for both pre-med and pre-law majors who can go to the undergraduate institutions and say “You’re graduating too many pre-med/pre-law folks.” Those constituencies have leverage with the institutions (if med schools started essentially discounting Cornell pre-meds, the impact on Cornell could be substantial.).
Could it be that chemistry, physics etc. is just hard, and that many students just can’t hack it? Is there anyone here who actually teaches one of these courses and can attest to being asked to make it a course to weed students out??
I’ve been in the room for several conversations in which a Dean has given a faculty member their marching orders. I’ve talked to faculty members who were recruited to do so, and then have done so.
Has the blog’s font changed? And the color scheme
The font seems to have changed, and the spacing definitely has.
January 16, 2009 at 7:11 am
ari
Eric is a doctor, you know.
January 16, 2009 at 7:38 am
dr. luba
At my lowly public university, back when we were on the trimester system, it was the second organic class that that was the weed-out class. Synthesis.
Why? Because you couldn’t bullshit or memorize your way through it. You had to learn reaction pathways and molecular interactions and then, having learned them, be able to figure out how to get from A and B to C. It tested your ability to actually think.
It was tough but it, more than any other class I have taken, helped prepare me for medicine. Why? Because I was learning how to figure things out, how to solve puzzles. And that’s what medicine is–you are presented with signs and symptoms, and you have to figure out what is going on and how to treat it.
And yes, most doctors don’t use much actual hard science once they are out in practice. But you really need the scientific underpinnings to be able to understand how disease works, and a statistical background to be able to interpret medical studies. Well, you do if you want to be reasonably good at it.
January 16, 2009 at 7:56 am
kid bitzer
well, i’m glad we finally have a representative of the medical profession here.
now: here’s the problem.
ari seems to be having trouble with his vision. he thinks he is seeing things–different fonts, different layouts, that sort of thing. he hasn’t seen any spots, or a doctor for that matter. furthermore, he has been emotionally unstable of late, prone to outbursts, overly sentimental about farm animals, and he never calls his mother.
what’s going on? how do you treat it?
January 16, 2009 at 8:02 am
eric
I don’t know what Ari and Silbey are talking about.
January 16, 2009 at 8:19 am
Vance
I too saw strange fonts yesterday for a while (the recent-comments column was sans-serif, for example). It seems back to normal now.
January 16, 2009 at 8:25 am
kid bitzer
vance–shut up, okay? we’re trying to gas-light ari.
or rather blog-light.
January 16, 2009 at 8:29 am
Vance
Duh — the difference was not the feetiness of the font but its size.
January 16, 2009 at 8:42 am
Tom
You must call Hugh Laurie. Only he can solve this problem.
January 16, 2009 at 8:51 am
dana
You’re orange, you moron.
January 16, 2009 at 10:28 am
Jason B.
. . . the difference was not the feetiness of the font but its size.
It’s not the size that counts–it’s the . . . feetiness? I kind of like it.
January 16, 2009 at 10:44 am
Vance
Serificity?
January 16, 2009 at 12:49 pm
kid bitzer
sorry, jason: it ain’t the feet, it’s the motion.
January 16, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Jason B.
Well, my feets got motion. And serificiousness.
January 20, 2009 at 4:20 pm
andrew
I’m very late to this thread, but I had the impression that History 5 (Modern Europe), as the only history course all majors were required to have taken before declaring the major at Berkeley when I was there, was a sort of a gateway course. The amount of reading was larger than in the other pre-major surveys I took – and included more difficult primary sources – and the identifications were much more difficult – excerpts from primary readings with no author or date given, in addition to terms/people to be identified. I felt like I got a lot more out of that course with respect to learning the practice of history than I got out of any of the other introductory surveys. With respect to content/coverage, the surveys otherwise resembled each other quite a bit.
January 20, 2009 at 5:01 pm
silbey
had the impression that History 5
Interesting stuff. Thanks for the comment.
January 23, 2009 at 11:08 am
Frank
Another important – maybe the MOST important – function of weedout classes is to ensure that the students who succeed are those who tolerate the high levels of stress, apparently pointless tasks, and sheer weapons-grade bullshit required in any respected profession or discipline.*
*why do you think it’s called a “discipline” anyway? the word might once have meant study, but now means submission more than anything.
January 25, 2009 at 12:23 pm
The History Enthusiast
First time commenter here.
I have the fortunate (or unfortunate?) task of teaching the research methods course for sophomore history majors. This is my third time teaching it, and I would definitely class it as a course that weeds out the unmotivated. Btw, I teach at an R1. The students either love it or hate it. Those who hate it are very resentful of the fact that I 1) don’t let them write on whatever the hell they want, and 2) require that they do archival research (though it is minimal) and insist that they can’t base their entire paper on three secondary sources. If they hate reading primary sources and hate research, then clearly they shouldn’t be a history major.
Seriously, though, aside from those extremely difficult and entitled students, it can be awesome. Basically I get to talk all about how much I love research…it’s a sweet gig.