Author: Sheri Dean Parmelee

New semesters bring new opportunities

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hi everyone:

So maybe you blew off the last semester. It’s summer right now and maybe you decided to go to the beach instead of going to your computer. It happens. Maybe you didn’t do a few Discussion Board Postings or you let a few rough drafts slip by undone. That happens.

Here’s the trick to handling that: don’t blame the professor. Get back on the horse that threw you and get your work done. Hey, if you really did poorly, you may have a second go at the class! If you mess up again, you may have the third opportunity to do the work. (This should not be your goal!)

Recently, I had the opportunity of realizing that one of my students was a serial liar. He would email me and I would respond, usually refusing his request. He would then post the document, thanking me for re-visiting his grade and allowing him to resubmit. (But, wait, I had said “no” to his request!) He apparently thought I had so many students that I would forget I’d said “no” and allow him multiple tries at his assignments. He was wrong. I take notes, including notes on whether or not a student lies to me. Oops! He hadn’t figured that into the equation.

So, here’s the deal. Do your work, do it on time, and (if you mess up) admit it and move on. Get things done and you will get your degree!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

APA formatting made easy

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

HI everyone:

Here are some quick tips for APA style formatting, taken from my research on the 6th edition of the APA Style Manual.

You need a Running head, which should look like this:

Running head: CAPITALIZE YOUR TITLE

The Running head belongs at the top of your page, flush left.

When you use an author’s name in the sentence, you don’t need it in the parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence.  For example:

Rich (2018) states that “here is the quote” (p. 123).   Note: please notice that the 6th edition now places the period at the very end of the sentence, not after the direct quote. This is a change from earlier editions.

When you use two or more authors’ names, use the word “and” if you mention them in the sentence; use the “&” symbol if you only use them in the parenthetical citation. Here are two examples:

Rich and Jones (2018) argue that “here is your quote” (p. 234).

Scholars contend “here is your quote” (Rich & Jones, 2018, p. 234).

Note that I have not used the first initials of either author in the in-text citations. Use their initials  only in the reference page. Youl will also usse the “&” symbol on the reference page.

If you begin a sentence with a number, you must spell out that number. Here are a couple of examples:

50 of the boys came with us. (Incorrect.)

Fifty of the boys came with us. (Correct.)

This is just a quick start to help you out. What issues have you faced with APA formatting? I find two of the three colleges where I work now ask for APA formatting. Previously, we were told to teach MLA.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

What are you waiting for?

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hi Everyone:

What are you waiting for? You’ve waited your whole life, up to now, wanting to get your college degree. Four years from now, you will be four years older, with or without it.

Folks, you aren’t getting any younger. You might as well go for it.

I’ve had folks in my classes who were older than I am (yes, they were THAT old!). You are no longer an odd ball if you show up for class and are as old as Methuselah.  In many ways, you will be respected for being there.  You will most likely have an advocate with the professor and your fellow students will treat you with kindness (though they may think you are hard of hearing and that they need to shout, depending on your age).

At the present time, I have senior citizens who have medical problems in my classes, young people with a boatload of responsibilities, and a student who is HIV positive (the individual posted it in the introductions section of our classroom, so everyone knows it). The one thing this mishmash of humanity has in common is that they are all making their dreams happen.

That’s why I’m telling you now- it’s fine to be a “nontraditional student” and you can do this! Go for it!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

A Tale of Two Students

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hi everyone:

When my kids were little, I used to tell them “we can do this nice or nasty, but we are going to do it” whenever I wanted them to do something they didn’t care to do. I’m the mom, they’re the kids, and they didn’t have a choice.

Well, the same thing can be said of college students. This past term I had a boatload of students and in that mix, at two different colleges, I had one student who shall be known herein and forevermore as “the student from the fiery place” and another student who was very diligent with his work.

One student demanded constant extensions… the other got his work done.

The end of the semester came for both colleges. The SFTFP was miserable till the bitter end. The other student sent me an email towards the end of the class, apologizing for missing a couple of deadlines in the last couple of weeks of the class. He explained that he wasn’t asking for any special consideration or extensions, but told me that he wanted to explain why his work had not been as prompt as previously had been the case. He apologized for appearing to be lackadaisical but told me that his work had been especially demanding and he missed some rough draft deadlines. He assured me that he would meet the final deadline and was completing his tasks with all of his might.

Guess which student I offered grace to?  Yep. It wasn’t SFTFP, for sure. This is something to keep in mind when you are dealing with professors. The second student had met every deadline and was an excellent student at the top of his class. He never asked for any special treatment and was always very pleasant with both me and with the other students in the course. Food for thought.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Don’t tell the professor what to do

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

I have had a couple of students who took the wrong approach to asking me to overlook their lack of performance in the classroom. They told me what to do. That was not a popular course of action.

One of them told me to give him back some lost points because “he’d been too busy to do the work on time.” I wonder if he’s ever seen the poster that talks about failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part. Who knows? Attitude is everything and I have been known to cut students a break, if they are nice and apologetic, but not in an Eddie Haskell way. (See Leave it To Beaver for a cultural explanation here!)

Another told me she deserved another chance because she had sent her essay to the Writing Center, gotten back a marked-up copy, and had posted it in error, without fixing it. Yeah, that might have worked but it was the third time it had happened (posting a marked-up copy that she didn’t bother to fix) in the last six weeks. She also wanted my feedback and the chance to fix the document again (that would have given her how many re-writes on one assignment???)

So, what do you do? If you mess up, admit it, apologize, and ask the professor if he or she will give you a break. If this is the only time it happened, you might get lucky. If you are a student-with-a-problem-of-the-week, it is not as likely.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Avoiding the Freshman 15 like the plague

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hi everyone:

One of the biggest challenges a new or returning college student can face (or sit upon) is the Freshman 15. The thing is, these extra fifteen pounds can strike in your freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, or graduate years without warning.  They are equal-opportunity pounds.

Students have a tendency to feel hungry when they are up late studying, so it’s very easy to order in a pizza to munch on…add in Goldfish (the crackers, not the animals) and you can gain weight pretty rapidly. (When my son graduated from college, he lost 17 pounds because he was no longer snacking his way through the night to keep awake).

So how do you avoid them? Well, as good as the sandwich shown here looks, a salad or low-cal smoothie is better for your waistline. This meal probably packs a 2,000 calorie punch,  which is enough to derail any good intentions. Adding fries and a soda can make it two days’ worth of calories, no problem.

It’s also important to exercise while you study. When I was preparing for my Ph.D. qualifying exams, I studied for six hours a day, every day, for two months (please note that I had been studying every day for the six months before that, as well). I wrote up 600 note cards and kept them on my treadmill, where I walked and studied. when I got tired of being stuck indoors, I learned to hold them in my hands at just the right angle so that I could walk on my front porch without falling off but so that I was still able to read and memorize the cards.

My study group and I had prepared study guide documents. I blew them up into 18 point font and taped them to the walls near my treadmill so I could run and get 90 minutes of study in before breakfast.  It was a wonderful sense of accomplishment and a superb way to start the day.

What ideas have you used to avoid those unwanted pounds? I would love to hear your ideas!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Finishing Strong or Finishing Wrong

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Do you see the look of joy on this young woman’s face? She just finished climbing a mountain (or even a molehill) and she knows she’s been successful.

College is like that. You work hard all semester and you finally reach the end of the term. You have turned in all of your work in a timely manner, you have studied for your exams, and now you are ready to celebrate.

Or perhaps you aren’t quite there yet. You have a couple of weeks to go, and the work is starting to pile up. You haven’t quite met all of the deadlines and you’re starting to get pretty far behind. Maybe you are like one gal I know who tells me that she’s creative and she can’t be creative on a deadline. Therefore, deadlines are nice suggestions but they don’t really matter.  Nope, sorry, that’s not going to fly.

When you get out into the business world, your boss is not going to want to hear you tell him or her that you can’t be creative on a schedule. Your talent may be outstanding, wonderful,  and superb but, if you can’t get it done in a timely manner, you won’t win the prize. Imagine a track and field star who says he or she will show up to run the race tomorrow because today isn’t doesn’t feel right for a win. Tomorrow will work, unless it doesn’t. Sorry Charlie, you aren’t going to get the job. Life doesn’t work that way.

How do you chose to finish the race? Strong or wrong? It can make all the difference in the world.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Redundancy is only good with twins

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Some things are good when repeated, like twins, for example. There’s nothing cuter than two identical little kids, even if they’re deer, like the ones pictured in this blog posting.

However, redundancy is not fun in your college essay. It is, quite frankly, boring and trite. I had a recent paper submitted by a student who wrote something like this:

This paper is about….This paper will cover…This writing is about….According to Smith (2016),….According to Smith (2016),… This paper will cover…This paper is about….This paper will cover….(You get the idea!)

And that was just the abstract. (For the uninitiated, an abstract is a 120 word summary that says what your paper will be on.) Don’t do it, people! This is the fastest way to set your professor’s teeth on edge. It will drive us to drink something stronger than iced tea (or wish we could).

A student in my communication class gave a five-minute speech. In that talk, he used the word “like” 54 times. That translates into almost 11 times per minute. Like you know like I like want like to talk about like how like to like makes like a peanut butter like and jelly like sandwich like.  Come again?

Redundant wording is saying the same thing over and over and over again, repeatedly. While you may think you have managed to stretch a one-page paper into two pages or a two-minute speech into five, your teacher is no fool. Your grade will suffer, so be aware and don’t do it.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Recalcitrant wipers

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Have you ever gotten stuck, really stuck in a rain storm and not known how to use your car’s windshield wipers? Maybe you’ve borrowed a friend or family member’s car. Perhaps you have rented a car to take you to that first big job interview.

And then it begins to rain. Folks, that’s not the time to search for the location of the wipers. It’s also not the best time to figure out how to turn them on (every car is different, or so it seems).

I was on a trip to Florida, which is known for torrential rainstorms, when suddenly it began to pour. I was about an hour and a half from my condo when the storm struck and it was as if someone was standing by the side of the road, pouring water on my car.

It was dark, which didn’t help matters one iota. The streetlights were few and far between which made things worse. And then I couldn’t figure out which way to flick the wiper switch. (It was not intuitively obvious!)

Here’s my personal recommendation: figure this out before you get on the road, especially if rain is forecast. Have you ever had this challenge? It’s not fun, trust me. Next time, perhaps I’ll talk about trying to open the gas door on an unfamiliar car, and wanting to refill your tank before you run out. Another issue: the location of the gas gauge isn’t always where you expect- you could be looking at the engine temperature light instead. (And you thought you were just getting great gas mileage!)

Have a great day and feel free to share your tales of woe.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

I dont kneed to prove reed cause my writing’s prefect

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Every semester, I get at least one student who doesn’t need to proof read anything because, well, as the title tries unsuccessfully to say, his or her writing is perfect in his or her own eyes. Or not.

If only perfection happened on a regular basis, it would save me a tremendous amount of time. It would not be necessary for me to slave over every poorly-written word, every missing punctuation mark, every…well, you get the idea.  I could finish my grading in record time, and be on to other things…like my own writing.

So what’s a student to do? I suggest reading your document out loud. Print it off (don’t try reading it off of a computer screen or you will miss something) and grab a cup of tea and stand there and read it as if you were presenting it.  Don’t rush or you will add in something you left out. Our eyes are tricky that way.

I also suggest you use a red or other bright colored pen to mark up your document. If you use blue or black ink, you may miss it when you go back to the computer to fix the mistakes you are likely to find. Don’t be ashamed of the hemorrhaging of your paper. I have had documents that looked as if they had been in a train wreck when I got through with them. (They weren’t my own, of course, because I’m prefect….) 🙂 [Please note that I misspelled the word “perfect” on purpose here!]

Mark away, fix the document, and then read it again. Now, perhaps, you are ready to turn in your absolutely fabulous assignment.

Best,

Dr. Sheri