Hello everyone:
Well, Huffy bikes are back on my “nice” list. They replaced my old bike with a brand new one, after we learned that a manufacturing defect made my old bike unsafe to ride.
I am now the proud owner of a white bike with purple trim that works like a champ (the bike, not the trim). See what happens when you write a sentence that is ambiguous? Things get muddy very quickly.
Now if only my air conditioning was working like a champ!
Best,
Dr. Sheri
Hello everyone:
Have you ever heard of a Dead Face Diva? Well, I have met a couple. They sit in class, obviously bored to tears, not participating ….ever…, and always with the same responses whenever I ask a question: “What he (or she) said” or “I don’t know….” (Note that a whine accompanies the second response.)
What do you think a professor thinks about that? I think that D. F. Diva is hopped up on drugs or is not the one paying for college. Or both. I think Mom and Dad are making huge sacrifices for a grown child who does not appreciate it and resents being in school.
What is my recommendation for the parents of such a student? Pull her out of college immediately so she doesn’t infect the other students with her horrid attitude and make her get a real job for the next couple of years. Perhaps a couple of years experience slinging hash will make her appreciate being in school and give her the maturity to actually apply herself when she gets back.
I have had several young men in my classes who learned the hard way that only having a high school education will not get you a very good job. They leave college at the bottom of their class, work a job for a couple of years turning the “slow” or “stop” sign on the side of the road, and then come running back to college.
They usually come up to me with apologies for how they acted in my class the first time and with promises for a much better work ethic this time. The amazing thing is that the couple of years they were gone and the life they had while out of college leads them to apply themselves and end up at the top of the class. It is a maturing experience some students simply need.
So, to my Dead Face Divas, I leave this message: straighten up or join the real world for a while and then come back as an adult. Ladies, you aren’t there yet.
Best,
Dr. Sheri
Hello everyone:
This is the time of the semester when some students are pretty worn out, if they are taking an 8-week course.
You’ve made it through the first four weeks, but the end really does not seem in sight yet. There is probably a boatload of assignments yet to be done, and they are probably the most heavily-weighted of the term.
How will you make it? Well, here are some tips. First, plan backwards. When is something due? Once you figure out that a huge research paper is due in four weeks, you need to back things up so that you are not writing the paper at midnight the night before it is due, having just started the research at 6 pm. Here’s how that will work:
Let’s pretend that today is the 1st.
The paper is due on the 30th, so you want to have your final draft completely done and waiting to be turned in two days before that. That is the 28th. (This allows you to read over it once more and print it out well ahead of the deadline. One more tip: re-read the instructions, so that you are absolutely certain that you have done everything called for. Do not leave anything out!)
You need to have your rough draft of the paper due the week before, so that you can polish and proofread. That will be the 21st.
It will probably take you two weeks to get your research done and the writing finished, so that means that you would need to start the research on the 7th.
In order to start the research on the 7th, you need to know what you will write about. Take one day to decide. That makes it the 6th.
You may need to get your instructor’s approval so allow at least two days for that. That translates to the 4th.
You need to make sure that you understand the instructions completely, so read them over twice and then sleep on it. That makes it the 3rd.
Read the instructions again and ask the professor to clarify anything you didn’t understand. It may take two days to get an answer, so that makes it the 1st.
Today is the 1st. Get to work!
Best,
Dr. Sheri
Hello everyone:
Today’s blog is about sentence fragments. They can be the bane of your existence, if you let them. Here are some examples from papers I received on both the undergraduate and graduate levels just this past week:
Input, process and output
One being having little to no human interaction
Also, somewhat unfair if others with the same pay don’t have to work such hours.
In this arena, information, advertising, and entertainment.
Let’s take them one at a time. First, “input, process and output.” How could anyone even think those three nouns and an article make up a worthwhile sentence? I’m sorry but those words did not make any sense even when they were surrounded by other sentences. I believe what the author was trying to say was the following: “One must input information, process it, and evaluate the output.”
Next, we can look at “one being having little to no human interaction.” Now this is obviously something to do with interpersonal communication, so it is easier to figure out. It could be re-written as the following: “There are several difficulties with the development of our personalities, one of which is having little to no human interaction.”
The next fragment could become something like this: “Also, it is somewhat unfair to make some individuals work long hours while others making the same pay do not.”
Finally, we could write: “In this arena, the most important things to consider are information, advertising, and entertainment.”
It doesn’t pay to be stingy with your words; use them to give your sentences subjects and verbs. This will lead to a better grade and will prevent your instructor from sitting there scratching his or her head.
Best,
Dr. Sheri
Hello everyone:
Sometimes I wonder why students go to college. They tell me that it’s to stay on their parents’ insurance or to avoid having to find a job or to keep their folks off of their back…..or something else.
While I appreciate the honesty of these students, it would be fun to hear that someone absolutely loves learning. One student that I asked about his reason for going to college told me “Well, the judge said I had a choice between prison or college, so I chose college.” I thought, “Oh, goodie, goodie gumdrops and you chose my class.”
I still don’t know what crime he was convicted of but every time there was too much noise outside our classroom, I sent him to quiet things down…..and he did, very successfully. He also got a very good grade in my course….he earned it; he didn’t intimidate me into it.
My question for you is: why are you here? What are your goals, dreams, ambitions? What can your professors do to help you achieve? Most of us are here because we love teaching students. Some of us feel actually “called” to do this work. How can I, as a professor, help you make it?
Best,
Dr. Sheri
Hello everyone:
I recently received an email from a student whose rough draft I had gone over. I gave him feedback using the rubric that I will be using to grade his final document.
He argued with me.
Now, please understand that it takes time for me to go through a student’s document a line at a time and give him suggestions on how to get a better grade. Do you know how many times one of my professors did that for me? Never as an undergrad or as a master’s student. Not once, until I got to my dissertation, which was 13 years after I started college.
But this kid argued.
He wanted to do the assignment his own way because he thought it “looked better.” Well, maybe it would, in his opinion, but I am the boss in the class. (And my boss gave me the rubric for the course that my boss designed…..he’s the chair of the department, so I do things his way.)
When he gets out of the service and gets into the real world of business, his boss will be the boss. His boss may or may not care how he writes a document but it is my goal for this person to be as prepared for the real world as possible. That is also my boss’ goal.
So don’t argue, just do it.
Best,
Dr. Sheri
Hello everyone:
I received a college essay from a student recently who, basically, said the same thing over and over, again and again, redundantly. Like I just did there.
Folks, you need to have more than one line of text in your essays or they get…..boring. In this case, he wrote one line as his introduction paragraph. (Please note: introductions need to be more than one line.)
His second paragraph began and ended with the same line and without much in between.
Guess how his third paragraph started? Yep. The same line, yet again. Ditto on the end of the third paragraph and the beginning and end of the fourth paragraph.
Wanna take a shot at what the one-sentence concluding paragraph contained? You guessed it. (Please note that conclusions, like introductions, should also be more than one sentence.)
I hope this helps with your plans to write an essay. I haven’t said much, but have hopefully said a lot herein!
Best,
Dr. Sheri
Hello everyone:
Each semester, I run into students who just barely get by. If I ask for two-five sentence paragraphs, they give me one five-sentence paragraph, or less. Sometimes they write three sentences, if you include “great post,” which I don’t. My question for them is: why did you even bother?
If I ask that all posting be completed by Sunday night at 11:30 pm ET, they will send me an email showing that they live on the west coast and that they therefore deserve three extra hours. They use more energy fighting with me than they expend in doing the work. Like the famous tennis shoe commercial says, Just Do It.
I had a student recently who announced that she is a “once a week student.” That won’t fly, folks. College takes a lot more than one day a week. So, she’s going to do all of her reading, all of her writing, and all of her projects in one day? Who is she kidding?
A while back, I had a class that met only on Saturday mornings. After the first class meeting, one student came up to me and said, “I thought that, because we meet on Saturday mornings, there wouldn’t be any homework.” Yes, she was serious. I told her that it didn’t matter what day of the week a class was held, this is college and there is going to be homework. She was in shock but she did step up to the plate and got things done. (She had also signed up for a Saturday afternoon class- I wonder if she was related to Ms. Once-A-Week Student? Apparently, she was going to get all of her college degree work done in class on Saturday.)
What experience have you had with students who didn’t apply themselves? Are you one of them?
Best,
Dr. Sheri
Hello everyone:
Today’s blog is a refresher course on the use of semi-colons. Please use them when you are connecting two independent clauses. That is, two complete sentences that are related in some way but which are fully competent to stand on their own.
My students have frequently utilized them at the most inopportune time. For example, they would have used one in this sentence. Sadly, one did not belong there; however, the one in this sentence is used quite nicely, if I say so myself.
Do not use a semi-colon where you need a comma. For example, some students use semi-colons with introductory phrases. They would have used a semi-colon instead of a comma in the sentence immediately preceding this one. That would have been a bad call.
You may use a semi-colon when you are listing a group of things but there is a comma in that list. An example of this is when you are writing an obituary (which I hope you won’t have to do anytime soon). You would list the survivors as follows:
She is survived by her brother, John Gingelhimer Smith of Fort Worth, Texas; her sister Matilda Hortense Smith of Washington, D.C.; and her father James Dooley Smith of Alexandria, Virginia.
Hope this helps!
Best,
Dr. Sheri
Hello everyone:
Watching school buses pick up their children this morning, I began wondering what my students in college are planning for their first day of fall semester tomorrow.
Have they visited our class webpage and read my first announcements, including the one that tells them to bring a copy of the syllabus to class with them, or do they figure that I printed it out and will hand it to them when they show up?
Do they have the book for the class, or will they make a quick scramble to the bookstore tomorrow, along with half of the student population (only to discover that the book is sold out and they can’t get it for the first three weeks of class)?
Will they have paper and pen, ready to take notes, or will they think that nothing important will be done tomorrow and blow off the idea of even showing up?
Will they prepare their backpack today, making sure that they have all the supplies they need for their classes, or will they run around first thing in the morning, trying to pull everything together at the last minute?
Will they lay out their outfit tonight, making sure that it is in good repair, or will they show up in their pajamas?
Will they make sure that their car is gassed up, their laptop is charged up, and their eyes are opened up, or will they run out of gas halfway there, string the cord for their charger across the room (which becomes a tripping hazard for everyone in the room), and sit in their chairs, barely awake because they stayed awake playing computer games half the night?
Well, I guess you can tell which route a successful student will take. The second choices, all the way through, are for students whose success is doubtful. See you tomorrow!
Best,
Dr. Sheri