Author: Sheri Dean Parmelee

You are on the brink of something great

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Do you ever think that something great is about to change your life forever? What a great way to see life! I saw a picture today of small children who were celebrating a ball game. They were literally jumping for joy.

That took me back to a picture I bought last week. It is a simple white-framed shadow box print with a bright pink background and the following words embossed in gold:

Something good is about to happen

I hung it in my bathroom, so that I can see it first thing in the morning and the last thing at night, and all those in-between times when I walk into the room. It lifts my spirits each time I see it.

Something good is about to happen

It wasn’t expensive, at only $14.99 (and less with a coupon discount at Bed, Bath, and Beyond), but it says something that is exciting. Maybe you are the first person in your family to attend college. Maybe you’re scared, excited, and thrilled, all at the same time.

Something good is about to happen

Maybe you’re passing from high school into college or college into grad school. Maybe you just finished your Ph.D. and have been called “Dr.” for the first time. Maybe you just got that notice of a scholarship in the mail or a great job offer or the proposal you have been waiting for and now you are newly-engaged.

Something good is about to happen

Go for it, my friend. Let me know what your “something good” was for today. I would love to share your joy because…

Something good is about to happen

Best,

Dr. Sheri

 

Plural versus possessive

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

One issue that my beloved students face, even at the graduate level, is whether something is plural or possessive. Hang on till the end of this blog posting and I’ll tell you a joke to reward your patience.

Do you have more than one? It is plural. Do you have something? It is possessive. Let me explain further.

There are fifteen girls standing on a boat. I haven’t said that they own the boat, just that they are standing there. Since they’re just hanging out, they don’t need a possessive apostrophe (but they do need an “s.”).

Now there are fifteen girls standing on a boat but one of them owns it. The sentence now becomes as follows:

Fourteen girls are standing on Sandy’s boat. Sandy owns the boat, but the other fourteen girls do not. The fourteen girls are plural but Sandy is the possessor of the boat.

Or you might write the following:

Fourteen girls are standing on one girl’s boat. Notice where the possessive apostrophe goes if only one girl is the owner. I hope it’s a big boat, with that many girls on it.

Now let’s say that they all won the lottery and all bought a boat together. The sentence might look like this:

The girls’ boat was a nice place for the girls to stand.

More than one girl owns the boat, hence the location of the possessive apostrophe. At the end of the sentence, we are merely talking about more than one girl, so no apostrophe is needed.

Got it? Okay, here’s the joke I promised:

A gal was telling her friends that she never wanted to have twins because she didn’t want to be pregnant for 18 months.

A pregnant pause ensues.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

 

Who me? Study?

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Sometimes I come across students who think they don’t need to study. Ever. Folks, that is a bad assumption.

Let’s say that you managed to get by in high school without ever cracking a book. Maintaining that same attitude in college could get you…kicked out for academic failure. The classes are harder and sometimes you only have a final exam. One of the speech classes I have taught only has the final, which covers the entire book.

Please don’t be of the opinion that you can memorize everything a teacher says by simply looking at her, without taking notes, and cough that up on the final. It’s just not going to happen. Your odds of learning everything from simply listening and never opening the book are slim to none. I had a student a few years back who said he could do it and tried to prove it. The first exam went well. The following exams did not turnout as he had hoped.

So what do you do? Read the chapter before class so that you aren’t seeing the material for the first time.  Take a lot of notes in class. When you get home (or wherever you’re studying), go over the notes with your textbook and correct anything you wrote down wrong. Review your notes once a week, so that by the time you reach the exam, you can make an educated guess on anything you aren’t sure about. As an instructor, I am not trying to fail you. Some of you will do just fine on that, yourself.

Should you study? Absolutely!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Getting along with the professor or getting in trouble

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

A good student can really “make the class” for a professor. You figure, we spend hours preparing for the class and grading papers that range from superb to …well, you don’t want to know. Some of us are adjuncts, which literally means “add on” professors. We have excellent educations but the school we teach for doesn’t have any openings for full time professors or simply does want to pay the higher (make that, much higher) pay scale or pay the benefits that hiring us full time would require.

So, we work for a lot less money than we could make in private industry and we accept that. Why? Because we love what we do. We feel that teaching is a vocation, not a job. You may make more money than we do, even if we have four degrees more than you currently hold.

What does this have to do with getting along with the professor or getting into trouble? It’s simple. After I have worked and slaved over your paper to give you feedback that I hope will help you, don’t clobber me with a bad review at the end of the term. Don’t call or email my boss and tell him or her what a lousy job I am doing and how you hope I will be pushing up daisies soon. I will hear about it and it won’t endear you to me for the rest of the semester. You will immediately and forever more be on my “naughty” list.

Instead, try to understand why I gave the feedback I gave. Email me with nice comments that seek to reach out and understand. When I have gotten an email that is kind, I am more likely to go back and re-visit the grade I gave you than I would be if you yell at me or try to tank my reputation.

Keep in mind: I am not doing this for the money. I am doing it to help you.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Plan ahead when traveling during the semester

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Sometimes students go on a trip during the term. I do not recommend it, especially if you are going on vacation. You will get behind and you will not have an excused absence.

Occasionally your work requires that you go, so you have no choice. It can be difficult, particularly if you are out of the country and have limited internet access for your online course.

Last July, I was out of the country for about a week and a half, in spite of teaching four courses. I always access my classes every day of the term, so I had to be available on a daily basis. Here are my suggestions for success in traveling while a student (or a professor!):

First, make sure that your computer battery is completely charged before you take off. Do not depend on electricity being available to you in-country. It might not be.

Nest, test your electricity adapter in the new country on something less important than your computer. (I tried mine out on my hair dryer and electric curlers. Both were fried the first time I used them in England. The adapter I was sold in the US did not work properly in England. I began using the hotel’s hairdryer but had to buy new curlers because I disliked the smell of burning hair.) The good news is that I have a new hairdryer here and I have new curlers to take with me the next time I visit merry old England.

My computer battery was down to 12% before I found a store that had the right adapter. It was a very stressful time and we had to go to four different cities to find an Apple store that had the right adapter for my brand new Mac Air Book. New is good but it is not always great because little towns and villages do not always have the up-to-date item that will interact well with your new computer.

Finally, check into your class and your teammates (if you have them) whenever possible because you never know when the Internet of your host country will be down.

What ideas can you share?

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Just showing up won’t get you a passing grade

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

I was talking with some colleagues this morning and they were sharing how students think that merely showing up for class and chatting up the professor is sufficient to get a passing grade in the course.

Folks, that is not correct. Welcome to college. There are some low-performing schools that may have let you get away with that in high school, but if you show up but don’t turn anything in, you won’t make it successfully through the semester.

I was teaching the first day of a public speaking course and a student asked if she could be excused from all of the speeches. In the very least, she wanted to “skip” doing the speeches. Since they accounted for 60% of the grade, I told her that she could not pass the course with only 40% of the work complete. She never came back.

Another gal told me that she “chose not to do the group speech.” It was a speech worth 20% of her grade. As a result of not doing this speech, she also couldn’t do the team review of the way her team worked together on the speech (another 10% of the grade), and she couldn’t get a positive review from her teammates (10% of the grade). That dropped her grade to a 60%, which was a very low “D.” She missed more than one point on her exams, but even a one point loss would move her to a 59%, which is an “F.”

After the semester ended, she sent me a “how dare you flunk me” email (my favorite kind- not!) and berated me for failing her. I explained the math. She never emailed me back.

Folks, show up and do the work. You won’t like the results if you just sit there.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Oxford commas, Parenthetical expression commas, and Introductory phrase commas in a nutshell

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

I have posted on these wonderful commas in the past. You can find the explanations of why to use them in other blog postings, but this is the Readers’ Digest condensed version for those of you in a hurry.

Oxford commas are used to connect the second-to-the-last item in a list of things. For example, here is a sentence without an Oxford comma:

“I love my parents, Daisy Duck and Daffy Duck.”  What? Your parents are ducks???? Let’s use an Oxford comma to clear up the sentence:

“I love my parents, Daisy Duck, and Daffy Duck.” Okay, now you love three different individuals. That’s what you were going for. Well done!

Parenthetical expression commas are used when you, for whatever reason, want to dump something extra into the middle of your sentence. (Like I just did.) If you want use one parenthetical comma, you must use two.  One goes in front of the parenthetical expression, to be clear, and one goes after the expression. (Like I just did, again.) You can’t use just one, like you cannot eat just one Lays potato chip.

Introductory phrases should have commas. These are the little comments you make at the beginning of a sentence. If you use too many, your writing will become dull. (There was one in the previous sentence.) I have another blog posting that goes into detail on how to get rid of them. Some of my students will use introductory phrases in 4 out of 5 sentences. That is dreadful.

I hope this helps!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Conditional Phrases

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hi everyone:

Today I want to talk about something you may have never heard of: conditional phrases. Let’s keep it short and sweet. These are also known as if-then phrases.

If you study, then it is more likely you will get a good grade.

If you smoke, then there will be a negative effect on your health.

If you do something, what do you think will happen to you? This is a simple way to explain how to phrase a conditional phrase. You use a simple present tense and add a simple future tense. You do this today and then this will happen later on.

Hope this helps your writing!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

 

Congratulations to the graduates

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

So here you are at the end of the semester. You are getting ready to walk across the stage to get your diploma. Well done!

Oh, the rolled paper you receive on stage probably won’t be your diploma. When we graduated, my son and I got a poster of the school when we shook hands with the dean. Another time, I got a rolled up Word document that said they would send me my diploma when they were sure my fees had been paid in full.

Don’t sweat it- that’s how things work. Do keep on top of things and call or email the school if you don’t get your diploma in the time they say they’ll get it to you. One of my schools didn’t send my final paperwork through until I had called them three times. A job was hinging on my receiving a final transcript that showed the degree had been conferred, but  one of the ladies in the office for my school “just hadn’t gotten around to sending the paperwork over to the registrar.” Then she tried to blame the registrar after the first two times I called. I finally called the registrar and she got it straightened out.

I do have a question for you: Who are you now? For many, many years (probably since you were 4 or 5 years old), you have been a student. Now you aren’t. One of the hardest things I found was to  redefine who I was. Since it took me a few months to get a job, that resulted in a lot of soul searching.

This might be difficult for you, and you may go through some depression until you get that first job, since you are no longer in the “student” category, but watch out for the tendency to stay in school after school so that you never have to redefine who you are. It’s an exciting time of life, so get your Big Boy or Big Girl pants on and go for it!

Congratulations on a job well done!

Dr. Sheri