<p>This thread could be the poster child for “going in circles.”</p>
<p>No, QM, that’s not what went on.</p>
<p>Someone else said: “Oh, and do you know why elementary school teachers complain about staying until 9 pm for parent-teacher conferences? Because the time between when school lets out and 9 pm may be the time that they’re normally grading and preparing lesson plans. Now because they have to do P/T conferences until 9 pm, somebody else has to feed their kids and get them in bed, and maybe they’re up until 1 am trying to get everything done.”</p>
<p>And I said: * Big whoops, professionals do this all the time. I’m sorry, I’m just not all that impressed by - 5 days out of the year, I have to stay up til 1 am trying to get everything done. That’s life in the big city. I don’t know a single working professional who doesn’t periodically have to stay up super-late, or work all weekend, or whatever.*</p>
<p>The first person was explaining how grueling it is for an elementary school teacher to have parent-teacher conferences 5 days out of the year because on those 5 days, they might have to be up til 1 am trying to get everything done, and I was saying that I’m NOT impressed by the “hardship story” of someone who has to stay up til 1 am 5 nights out of the year to get work stuff done. Maybe if I had said “someone has to stay up til 1 am” instead of “I” it would have made more sense, apologies if I wasn’t clear. </p>
<p>And yes, this is going around in circles, because somehow my little anecdote about my D’s professor emailing her back that she didn’t email on weekends was morphed into some kind of “well, I suppose that she thinks her professors are at her beck and call 24 / 7 and she just feels entitled not to read the syllabus or delay her work til the last minute.” Whatever. </p>
<p>“As a single incidence, that might be true, PG, but if she makes it clear that she doesn’t respond on weekends, that (maybe) discourages that student from trying again on another weekend. If she uses that same time to respond instead, the message is that she’s available on weekends and he will feel free to repeat the behavior.”</p>
<p>A better way to show that you don’t respond on weekends is not to respond on weekends :-)</p>
<p>^A better way might be to announce it in class. If you simply don’t respond, the student still has hope that you just didn’t happen to see his/her email and that you might respond in the future. </p>
<p>Thanks, I got the context now, PG. Actually it was the hyphen after “by” that threw me.</p>
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<p>A large part of that is because it seems you are imposing the professional norms of your much more highly renumerative occupation where working 70-80+ hours/week is the norm without realizing that’s not what K-12 teachers or Profs signed up for. </p>
<p>In the Profs’ case, it’s doubly ironic considering they do work 70+ hours/week…only most of it isn’t related to undergrad teaching and all that goes with it. Research and publications is the part most parents/undergrads DON’T SEE…YET IS OFTEN THE MOST/nearly as important part of a Prof’s ability to land tenure or get further promotions in his/her field. </p>
<p>I think its important for professors to be as flexible as possible about deadlines and make-up exams. Students are under a lot of pressure. Professors can take some of the pressure off. Hey, as long as the work gets done by the end of the semester what does it matter whether an artificial deadline is met. (I am thinking about all the final exams and papers coming due over the next two weeks…seems like December is prime time for breakdowns or, worse, suicides.)</p>
<p>Flex a little. Its no skin off your nose.</p>
<p>The guiding principle for professors should be to treat students as you would like to be treated, or, maybe, as you would like your own child to be treated.</p>
<p>I’m sorry if this tone comes across wrong, but really? Life after college includes pressures and mutli-tasking. I say, the successful young adults learned their parameters and how to cope,. DH held himself to high standards-and also his students. There are times to bend, sure. But expectations are expectations. </p>
<p>You want the prof to grade it all at the last minute? Do you know when grades are due from professors? Or maybe, to help the poor dears, we should eliminate half the work? Just as…uh…in real life??</p>
<p>@colleghelp - that had to be satire, right? Do you really think that students should have no deadlines and that the professors should just let them get it done whenever, as long as it is before the end of the semester? I have a D who is a freshman now, I wish that was the advice I was giving her. </p>
<p>Parents should know their children. Of course this is a stressful time. If you know your child is prone to breakdowns, is suicidal, etc. it probably manifested itself before college. If they are like mine, a pretty normal teen, then my answer is to tell them to get over it and get back to work. I wouldn’t expect her to need or ask for an extension for anything except for a real emergency - really bad sickness (not just the common cold) or a serious family emergency like a death.</p>
<p>BTW - I want your job. I think I’m going to tell my boss that I will give him my latest project whenever.</p>
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<p>Disagree 100%. Your whole basis for the entire thread is wrong. </p>
<p>Professors are not there to serve the students. You are paying for your students to have the opportunity be graced with the presence of incredible brilliance. </p>
<p>Make up exams usually require a doctor’s note or an obituary of a close relative. </p>
<p>Since the grades are competitive, deadlines must be deadlines so as not to penalize the students that do meet them.
College students are 100% adults and need to be treated as such. </p>
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Just for context, this semester I have 3 courses and 81 students. Between their assignments, exams, and labs, they have produced over 2100 items for me to grade. I often accept things late, because I want students to keep working and to get their act together. I always hold out hope that they will pull through by the end of the semester. Here are some problems with your suggestion:</p>
<p>1) Students appreciate if I post solutions to homeworks and/or exams. I can’t really accept your late assignment after I posted all the answers online. </p>
<p>2) I go over the exams in class, usually the next class period afterwards. If you haven’t managed to take it yet, then what? And if you don’t take it with the rest of the class, I have to find time to proctor it or get someone else to.</p>
<p>3) I mass grade exams and assignments. It’s like an assembly line and it’s the most efficient grading process. When I have your single Late Homework Item, turned in after the rest are graded, I have to locate the key, grade your sole offering, pull up the online grade sheet, find you, and enter it. It more than triples the time I would ordinarily have spent on your item had you turned it in on time. </p>
<p>4) Despite the fact that you turned in your assignment late, you apparently expect me to grade it the instant you turn it in. When that doesn’t happen, because you’ve gone to the “random” pile, you accost me daily and send email with giant font demanding to know when your assignment will be graded.</p>
<p>So yes, it IS skin off my nose. And a pain in my arse as well. In fact, so much so that I’m considering next semester (when I expect to have 100+ students) telling them I’m not accepting ANYTHING late. For ANY reason.</p>
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I am a writing teacher, so all my assignments are essays. My deadlines are not artificial. They exist so that I can give EVERY student in ALL my classes the amount of time that their essays deserve. If it were just about assigning an A or B, this would not be an issue. But I provide extensive feedback so that students can learn from the experience. When papers come in late, especially at the end of the semester, that means I have to take time away from someone else in order to grade the late paper before MY deadlines arrive. (Or did it not occur to you that your professors also have deadlines?) Every paper affected by this gets a little less attention. Pile on the late papers, and each one gets less and less attention.</p>
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That’s my point exactly. I can’t do this ^^^^ if I don’t hold my students to a deadline.</p>
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Right. It’s skin off your nose and every other student’s. You can’t have it both ways. Seriously, @collegehelp, are you just making this stuff up as you go?</p>
<p>Late assignments could be accepted but with a slight penalty, maybe a penalty that increases slightly for each day late. </p>
<p>Exams can be created so there are two versions of the exam, one of which is for make up exams. That way you could post the results of the first exam and still offer a make-up exam.</p>
<p>Allow every student to make up only one exam regardless of the reason. No need to document a death or an illness.</p>
<p>Many professors have teaching assistants to help with this sort of thing but I think it is very doable without help.</p>
<p>By the way, there is technology available for scoring objective-style exams (scannable forms). Desktop form scanners are pretty affordable. Textbook publishers provide software for creating alternate forms of an exam, including essay questions. The essay questions, however, would have to be scored by hand. Also, math problems would have to be scored by hand if you are going to give partial credit.</p>
<p>If you are grading papers, it may take you several days to grade all the papers anyway. Why would you ever not accept a late paper, at least for partial credit.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why this would be so difficult. Grades are usually not due until several days after final exams are over. Oh yeah, the registrar will still accept your grades even if you miss your deadline…</p>
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<p>Indeed. Some older college classmates had difficulties in college and the workplace because they weren’t able to keep to deadlines. </p>
<p>Seemed odd to me as someone who attended a public magnet where most teachers were exceedingly inflexible about deadlines. You miss a deadline, you’d got a massive grade deduction as a lesson on how missing deadlines work in the adult world. Knew some folks in HS whose graded work went from an A to a D for being 2 days late. </p>
<p>This weekend, I am going to go on line and give comments on 55 second drafts before students write their final drafts which are due Wednesday or Thursday, so they need the comments in time to use them. Then, next weekend, I am going to grade final drafts and give some comments so they have time to decide to revise these essays again for their portfolio. The next weekend, I am going to bring home about 70 portfolios (one class has a different timeline), and grade them all by Dec. 23, when grades are due.</p>
<p>This is a typical schedule for me. Late papers really, really make it difficult to impossible. It is a ton of skin off my nose, actually.</p>
<p>Agree with my various colleagues in the teaching profession, above. I comment on over a hundred pages of writing per student per semester. If work starts coming in late, that student’s sequence of writing does not match up to what we are doing in class, which often includes going over sample anonymous papers after they have been handed in. The late student now has an advantage by seeing other classmates’ papers before writing his, something that the rest of the class did not get to do. And the student himself doesn’t benefit from learning to push through to get the assignment done himself. If there is a true emergency that is one thing, but in other cases students need to learn to get the work in on time.</p>
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<p>Um… as someone who has to grade all that stuff and who has my own stuff to do, I really have to ask… are you out of your flippin mind? No, that’s not how life and the world works. I grade essays for an upper level writing class. I spend about an hour with EACH student’s paper so that I can provide extensive, useful feedback. What makes you a special snowflake to decide to give your assignment to me whenever you please? </p>
<p>You are given a syllabus. It’s not my fault you can’t budget your life. </p>
<p>Yes, things come up. Yes, there are exceptions. I’ve been on the receiving end of those exceptions (once for the flu and once after the suicide of a close friend.) It should be an extreme exceptions though. </p>
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You are obviously not a college professor.</p>
<p>Can you imagine if we all ran our work life like this? Eh, I’ll just turn in my work whenever. My clients don’t care if it’s January or April. </p>
<p>It would be useful to know if the OP is a parent or student. I never saw the answer to that question.</p>