Hello everyone:

I got a flurry of documents from a student yesterday. He had only turned in one thing all semester long and then suddenly turned in all of his other assignments on the last day of class. Poorly written, the wrong assignments, copied and pasted from each other….the list goes on.

Last minute Lew did not make a very good impression. He offered no reason for being MIA all semester long and did not follow the directions when he finally, at long last, turned something in.

I received an email from Last minute Lucy a couple of weeks ago. She was also MIA for the entire semester, after the first week. She had been “busy” and unable to get around to doing her homework, so she wondered if she could make it up in the last week of class.

I told Lucy that my syllabus clearly states that I don’t accept any document more than two weeks after it was due. She had missed every discussion board posting; my policy is “you snooze, you lose” because discussion boards cannot be made up. That was 20% of her grade, so now she would have an 80. Two of her documents were more than  two weeks late, so that was another 20% of the grade. Now she would have a 60% or a D. If she missed the other two documents by even one point, she would have an F. I told her to do the math. She sent me a reply saying, “I did the math. See you next term.”

What about Lew? Well, he missed a “Failure for Nonattendance” grade because he turned everything in on the last day of class. One of his documents was more than a month late, so it got a zero. Another document was almost three weeks late, so it got a zero. The one thing he turned in on time was very poorly done, and he  lost points for not turning in two rough drafts. Long story short, he got the same grade Lucy would have gotten, if she had turned things in at the last minute.

The lesson here? Don’t be Lew or Lucy. Show up for class, turn things in on time, and pass your course.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

P.S. The names in this blog posting have been changed to protect the guilty.