10 Feeling Bad

Today I felt bad when I told more than one student that he or she could not bring in work the next day or e-mail it to me. I refuse to have students e-mail stuff to me or put it in my mailbox because it is amazing how much stuff they swear they have given you but somehow you never receive it. The work ranged from one assignment to the entire term’s work. I had been telling students that the coming deadline to hand in any missing homework or assignment for the past two weeks. Never how late you make the deadline students always do it at the last minute.

I had one student that frantically e-mailed me that he had arrived just few minutes before the end of class but alas the class ended a few minutes early and I had left for the day. Normally, this student was only a few minutes late but today he outdid himself. One woman student had borrowed resource book from me and did one of nine assignments missing by next we had class again. I had one student that truly outdid herself, Jessica, which I shall discuss at greater length who arrived five minutes at the end of the last class one week after the deadline to hand in anything after missing in action for at least four weeks.

The next day after I wrote this I had student Steve who e-mailed me. He had missed the last three classes because he felt too ill to go to school but not too ill to see a doctor. He asked me to e-mail him the information on what he had missed because he found contacting his fellow students too unreliable. I e-mailed him information on the forthcoming final examination. This was the Thursday before the test that would take place on Tuesday. At midnight Monday he e-mailed me for additional information about the test. He admitted he had waited to the last minute to answer.

These are the only there choices. The class had a vote of the original six essays. They chose two and I chose one. You will be asked to answer all three questions. There is no open book test.

Professor,
Upon reviewing your e-mail, I just noticed that you only gave me three possible essay choices. In your e-mail you said that three of a possible ‘five’ would be on the test. Am I to assume that the three you gave me are the three that will be on the test, or did you mistakenly forget to add the other two questions? I will try to study the questions from my Midterm since the essays appear to be based off of that, but I’m not sure what aspects will differ.

Closed book test.

Another thing I noticed is that the final exam will last until 1:00 PM. At current, this will conflict with another class of mine, which starts at 12:15. How should I proceed with the test?
Do the best you can. I said I would give class as much time as possible. I presume most students will finish well within the two hours. Nobody else present mentioned any particular problems with the time.

I realize that I have contacted you with nearly no advance notice, and as such I don’t expect much accommodation. I only wish that I noticed these things earlier in the weekend when I was reviewing these topics. If there is anything you can do for me, I would greatly appreciate it. In either case, I will have to make do.

Unfortunately, this is the price you pay when you do things at the last minute and you were out the last three sessions of class in which I explained the nature of the Final Examination.
Originally, I felt I was doing the students a service by being so accommodating. In reality, I have realized that facilitates the dysfunctional nature of their learning activities. One must ask why they can in one night or one weekend make up all the term’s assignment that were unwilling or unable to do for the previous fourteen weeks. Even if they do the work themselves instead of copying it is not quite the same as doing this over a period of time or discussing it in class with their fellow scholars.

I had one class where I provided seven of ten homework assignments so that they did not have to buy the book or even search for the material on the Internet. The assignments ranged from two to eight pages. The other three assignments involved reading a section of a book of sixty pages, reading part of one Biblical book and the looking for a creation story on the Internet. Compliance ranged from any given assignment from twenty percent to sixty percent. What happened would be that several students would be absent so that would not have the work for the next time, a few more would hand in ahead of time and coming in late it would be inconvenient to give the assignment back to them, or they would be absent. On one memorable occasion, in this class of twenty-five students, five had the assignments, one had handed it in early, ten were absent, and the rest did not have it. The next class, they out did themselves, we had twenty students present but only four had done the assignment. The unprepared students would share their insights of ignorance as repeated what others had said. My favorite technique would be when one of these would repeat the same information or said they agreed, I would ask why.

A few students endeavored to do the assignment in class as we discussed it or read the material, A few students called upon that did not do the work would say they had already handed it in. I solved the problem of handing in the work early by saying I would give an “F”. Some teachers would try to get students by doing the work by giving a quiz, surprise or announce. For this particular class, for both the midterm and final examination one of the essay questions the students had to answer was the homework assignment they had none done.

By sticking to deadlines, I find I reduce the amount of work that I have to process at the last minutes so that I have time to analyze. I do myself a favor and the student can’t slip inferior work by.

As a former high school teacher, I can recognize the student assumptions behind these phenomena. They would do as little work as possible on the assumption that not all of them could be failed by the teacher or the teacher would look bad. The teacher would conspire by permitting the students to make up the work at the last minute. This was often homework assignments they would copy over night from other students or the more lazy ones would try to scribble their name in place of the student that actually had done the work or use white. I would observe how many often styles of writing would change from the homework assignments. I would have students who would swear they had learned their lesson if they were only permitted to make up their assignments. They would repeat this in the next class and the next semester. The only thing they had learned they did have to really do the work or push came to shove to do as little as possible.