Author: Sheri Dean Parmelee

How in the World Do I Get Organized: Drowning in a Sea of Assignments

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Students ask me all the time about how in the world can they get organized and be disciplined enough to finish their degree. Let me let you in on my personal organizational secrets to finishing two degrees at the same time while running a business, being active in my church, and making time for family. It really isn’t complicated but it isn’t always easy.

First, get yourself a month-at-a-glance calendar and keep it with you at all times. Get a variety of colored pens and mark things up as follows:

Enter all of your work hours on the squares. Add in all I-better-not-miss-this family events (like your mother’s birthday or your anniversary).

Pen in all of your class meetings, if you have face-to-face classes. Add all of your course assignment due dates, color-coding each class accordingly by using the different colors of ink in your pens. Highlight major assignments.

Okay, now take a look at things. What time are you going to set aside for doing homework? When I was writing my dissertation, I blocked out two hours a day to write. Keep in mind that they were not the same two hours every day; I had to make adjustments for personal scheduling. The important thing was that I was consistent.

For the record, I wrote a 400 page dissertation in 12 months, by keeping to my two hour a day schedule. If I had to miss a day, I made it up over the next week. I literally set an oven timer for 45 minutes at a time. I would work for those 45 minutes and then get up to fluff my pillow, going back to work for another 45 minutes. After another very brief break, I would write for another 30 minutes, and I would be done for the day.

If someone came in to talk or I had to leave the computer, I turned off the timer. Distractions sometimes happened, but they didn’t count towards my two hour time. (My dissertation, which is available on ProQuest, is called “House M.D. and Indirect Communication: A Close Textural Analysis,” in case you want to read it.)

Keep track of assignments, checking them off (do not cross them off because you need to see what you have done) as they are complete. You can do this, but you must be organized and disciplined enough to do it.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Being Verbose Should Not be Your Goal

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Oh, my stars! The verbosity reigns in some students’ work…..They use the biggest words they can find, in the hopes of making an impression on their professor. They do, indeed, but not the way that you might imagine.

Many years ago, I had a professor whose comments on a paper required that I get out the dictionary. By the time I had gotten to the end of a sentence, I had forgotten what the beginning of the sentence said. It was that bad.

Oftentimes, students pull out every big word they have ever heard and put it in their paper. I had a student not so very long ago who wrote a six-page document, filled with huge, multi-syllable words. The whole paper could have been boiled down to one sentence: Good communication is good and bad communication isn’t. That’s it. Really.

Yes, I understand that graduate students have the need to prove themselves. One of my colleagues, remarking on a master’s thesis we were reading, said, “This kid has diarrhea of the mouth.” He was right.

The question is: Do you want to be known as having that problem? I would think not. If you are a communication major, communicate. Don’t obfuscate, stupefy, obscure, or make your writing unintelligible. Explain, don’t explicate, until you get to the Ph.D. level. Once there, do it carefully.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

APA 6th versus 7th

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

There’s a new kid in town: the 7th edition of the APA Style Manual. Oh, goodie. Sorry folks, but it is my personal opinion that the APA folks come out with a new manual just to keep themselves in business. I mean, the sales for their books go up substantially every time they make an adjustment.

Here’s the latest scope: In-text citations are staying pretty much the same as before. You still write the following:

Beebe and Masterson (2020) state that “here is the direct quote” (p. 123).

It has been argued that “here is the direct quote” (Beebe & Masterson, 2020, p. 123).

You still cite the page or paragraph number (if the online article you are reading does not have pagination) if you have a direct quote. You still only cite the year of publication once in a paragraph per author reference, unless you have multiple citations of the same authors in that paragraph but they all have different publication years.

Here’s the nails-on-a-chalkboard moment for me: You use plural pronouns (they, them) with single nouns (customer, person). Not in my classroom, thank you very much!

I will cover more changes in future postings, so stay local!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Subjects and Verbs can be Bothersome or Superb

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

There’s nothing like a good verb to really get a sentence going. Verbs like titillate, saunter, sizzle, clutch, ensnare, wither, or glisten are fun to write and enjoyable to read. The problem that some students have is when they write a sentence with the verb at a distance from their subject.

For example, perhaps the sentence is “I, in spite of dangers, toils, and snares, am going to the store.” They think that the word “snares” is the word that needs the verb, so they write “I, in spite of dangers, toils, and snares, are going to the store.” Nope. Not in this woman’s language.

The thing to do when your subject and verb are far removed from one another is to pretend that all of the words in the middle aren’t there. Take them out, temporarily, and write “I….am going to the store.” You wouldn’t say “I are going to the store.” At least, you wouldn’t do it if you want a good grade.

Another subject/verb challenge is when students believe that they need a comma between whatever noun they have and the word “is.” I don’t know what misguided English teacher wannabe told them that, but the answer is “no, a thousand times, no.” In the earlier sentence that I used as an example, the prepositional phrase “in spite of dangers, toils, and snares” acted like a parenthetical expression. Hence, the need for the commas. The students, on the other hand, write something like “The reason, is between you and me.” No, please.

Most recently, I had some students who thought that periods were excess baggage and that the word “I” never needed a capital letter. But those nails-on-a-chalkboard errors will have to wait for another time.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Attitude is Everything: Or “Can You Help Me Understand” versus “My Bad Grades are all Your Fault”

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

In my in-box this morning, I received two emails. One was from a student who had gotten some less-than-desirable grades on some recent assignments. The other was from another student who had failed miserably in all the assignments he turned in so far.

Student number one was very polite and asked for some clarification on why she had done so poorly. Her attitude was one of respect, humility, and good will. She was determined to do better, to earn good grades, and she wanted to know how she needed to improve her work, so that she would have success in the course. It is a pleasure to help folks like her. I responded quickly and offered her the chance to talk one-on-one via the phone, going over her work a line at a time, so that she could improve her writing skills. Quite frankly, her writing is holding her back from doing her best. It will be a pleasure to work with her and I look forward to helping her achieve her goals.

Then there is student number two. His email was angry, and had a “how dare you grade me low” attitude. Thirty minutes after launching his first email, he had sent me a second one, telling me that he would be reporting me for unfair grading. He cited chapter and verse from the student handbook (with no citations, interestingly enough) and told me he was reporting me asap.

Here’s the deal: both students had the same kind of problems with their writing: poor grammar, little to no punctuation, sentence structure that would make my mother squirm (a once-upon-a-time high school English teacher), and incorrect in-text citations. One student wanted to learn; the other student wanted to game the system (aka getting grades one does not deserve by threatening the instructor).

One of these students will, in all likelihood, improve her writing and feel terrific at the end of the semester. She will take the transferable skill into all of her future classes, where she will excel because she was willing to learn in my class. The other student? Well, he will probably threaten his way through his degree, focusing not on learning but on manipulating others. And that is really a shame. You see, attitude is really everything.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

When the Professor Offers to Help, Don’t Stand Her Up

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Sometimes students struggle in college. Maybe they are a first generation college student and have no idea of how to study. Perhaps this is their first semester of online classes and are lost at how to navigate the course material. It happens. The key to success in a time of stress is to reach out the professor. And then don’t stand her up when you have an appointment.

There have been times in the past fourteen years of my academic career where some students could have really benefited from a little course adjustment. Perhaps it was as simple as making a little change in how they were writing papers or citing sources or …or…or… You fill in the blank.

I reached out to them, trying to arrange for a phone call to get them on the right course, only to have them make an appointment and then not show up.

This week was one of those times. I had appointments with eight at-risk students this week. Four of those appointments actually happened and I offered to meet with those students weekly, if necessary, over the next seven weeks. I think all four of them will have success, not only in this class, but in the rest of their degree program.

Four of those students never showed up. What a pity. What a waste. One of the students who had already stood me up once earlier in the week actually made her not showing up my fault. Well, the good news, is that this is “two strikes and you’re out.”

A few minutes with your professor can be a gift. Don’t turn it down.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Paying Attention to Feedback

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

For each of my online students, a hearty “hello” from your professor. Another hearty “Please pay attention to the feedback I spent hours giving you” request. It is very discouraging to spend hours on a beautiful afternoon typing feedback into your document, only to realize that you have totally ignored it.

Recently, I had a multi-complaining, last-minute Louie who resubmitted a document only a few minutes after I took it apart and offered suggestions on how to fix his sentence fragments and incorrect punctuation. Let’s go over a few things that can really jinx your document and thereby lower your grade.

The almighty sentence fragment sentence fragment is enjoying a great comeback these days. These are sentences that are missing subjects or verbs or something else that would make the sentence an actual sentence. Here are some examples:

Which means that I can. (Friend, this belongs to the sentence before it. It cannot stand alone, nor should it have to.)

In addition to that. (To what? You have left me hanging here. From the looks of things, these words belong to the next sentence.)

Incorrect punctuation is also quite popular. Students sometimes confuse commas and semi-colons, so let’s go over them. When you have an introductory phrase, you use a comma, such as in this sentence. A parenthetical expression, which is a word or words added to a sentence to add clarity, needs two commas. I have just given you an example of a parenthetical expression in my previous sentence.

Do not sprinkle your sentences with liberal amounts of semi-colons. Students frequently utilize a semi-colon where a comma is needed, thinking that the following sentence is correct: The rain; which falls in Spain; lands mostly on the plain. It is not right. Run as fast as you can away from the need to use semi-colons incorrectly.

Do not put commas in between the subject and the verb. A lot of students put commas after the word “is,” such as “The reason is, because I said so.” Nope. That sentence isn’t even written very well, and it does not need a comma at all.

Back to Louie before we end this blog posting. Louie received about 20 minutes of my time. The only thing he changed correctly on his document was putting his name on it. The rest of the feedback he either ignored or he misread in his eagerness to resubmit his document for grading. Too bad. A little more time might have resulted in his getting a better grade…..

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Quitting Before You Cross the Finish Line

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

I have students who do well all term and then, for no apparent reason, blow off the last assignment or two. No explanation, no excuses, they just disappear or, worse yet, they do a half-baked job on the final work for the class.

Why in the world would someone do that? I read every word of every assignment, so I don’t just say “Oh, he or she meant well. I’ll give him or her the grade….” Nope, it doesn’t happen. Not in this woman’s Army.

Let’s crunch some numbers here. Let’s say that you have an 88 and are sooo close to an 90, which is an A. You have a quiz or small assignment left to complete. It’s nothing particularly mind-bending so it seems that you have said, “She’s a nice lady. It doesn’t matter if I do well or not. I’ve got this.’ Or perhaps you tell yourself, “She’ll give me the A or I will torch her with the end-of-class survey.”

Not so fast here. I might curve the grade of a very good student who started off slowly but understands the topic at hand towards the end of the class, but only if the person is less than a half a point from the next letter grade. Sorry, Charlie but you are two points away and that 88 you have is not an A.

The translation here is that 88 does not equal 90, so do the best you can on the last assignment. Show an effort here. Do not write a three-sentence answer where the instructor has required two five-sentence responses to a question (an all-time favorite but somewhat annoying habit of mine) and think you have made it.

You might say, “Well, this class doesn’t matter. I don’t care if I get an A or a B.” A few years down the pike, you might find yourself applying to graduate school and you might just need that A. Why blow it off? Or maybe you decide to get into education and your potential boss wants to see your transcript. What excuse are you going to make for that B-that-could-have-been-an-A? Blame the instructor? Yep, that will go over well….

So here’s the thing: Do well all the way to the end. That way, you won’t have later regrets over the fact that the curve you were hoping for just didn’t materialize.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

A Fragment Does Not a Sentence Make

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Welcome to the bane of many a professor’s existence: sentence fragments. Oh, my, if I had. A nickel for every. Sentence fragment that. Abounds in many. Students’ work. I. Would be. Wealthy.

Okay, so maybe I wouldn’t be dripping in diamonds or frolicking in fur, but I could, in the very least, pay a visit to Cracker Barrel.

There are times when the fragment really appears to be a part of the sentence that went before or after it, but there are times when it seems to materialize on its own. So how do you avoid writing them? Please proofread your document. Read it out loud and you will be amazed at the number of mistakes you will catch before the professor lays an eye on your assignment.

Allow me a slight digression here. I am bent over double in laughter when a student tells me that he or she doesn’t need to “poof reed,” “prove reed,” or the like. They have, therein, proven the fact that they really do need to take the extra time to have a second look. Please humor me here.

Yes, I understand that auto-correct can do in your best intentions. When texting with friends, “that blasted autocorrect” (as I call it), can make it necessary to correct and re-correct your document, but please take the few extra seconds to perfect your writing.

If nothing else, your rich professor will have to pay his or her own way to Cracker Barrel! Have a great day!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Adventurous Professor Seeks Better Instructions

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hi everyone:

I had an adventure today, putting together something that was lacking in the instructions department, though the directions came in five different languages. I wonder if everyone had the experience I did. Here’s the link:

If They Say “No tools necessary” Why Do the Directions inside Show the Dude Using a Sledgehammer?