Author: Sheri Dean Parmelee

Introducing Quotations in your Essay

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

This posting is a bit early because I had a graduate student who asked me a question today and I thought you might benefit from reading my answer.

Personally, I like students to introduce a quotation in their writing, rather than just dumping it into a paper. In this case, the student was writing an APA formatted essay and she wanted to know what I was looking for in an introduction that did not interrupt the flow of her paper. Here is how I replied:

As far as your in-text citations go, let’s pretend that you want to quote Tom Smith who wrote an online  article in 2015. There are no page numbers, but your quote (making sure it is introduced in your essay) would look like this in APA format:

Smith (2015) posits that “here is the quotation” (para. 5).

You will not interrupt the flow of the paper with this type of citation. You can say that Smith does the following, to break up the introductions a bit:

Smith (2015) argues

Smith (2015 contends

Smith (2015) maintains

Smith (2015) states

Now, you are just using different verbs here. Do not use all of them in one paragraph. Rather, since we know Smith is a male, you could just say something like the following, if you are still in the same paragraph but want to use more than one quote from him:

Additionally, he also argues that “here is the quotation” (para. 6).  (Note that we did not use the date here because we already have the 2015 date earlier in the paragraph.)

If you do not use his name in the sentence, your quote might look like the following:

It has been stated that “here is the quotation” (Smith, 2015, para. 7).

I hope this helps you write an in-text citation with an introduction for a quote that does not contain a page number. Yes, you really do need to count the paragraphs!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Why do college book publishers release new editions?

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Why do you think college book publishers release new editions? Can there really be that much new stuff since their last edition? Well, guess what? College professors usually don’t like the new editions any better than you do.

Why, you might ask? Because, while you cannot sell your textbook to your friends coming up through college after you, we have to re-do all of our Power Points and texts.

College book publishers release new editions so that they can take an already-successful book and give you the most up-to-date information, but they also like to have a cash cow keep producing. If they don’t update the book, then folks will keep buying and re-buying the same book on the secondary book market. There’s no money for them in that!

My current communication textbook is an outstanding book by a well-respected author. It is now on the 14th edition. Most new editions come out every two years or thereabouts. I have been teaching college for 12 years. You do the math on how often I have updated my lectures and examinations.

It’s taking me the better part of three afternoons to do my own update and I still have more than half the book to go and all of the tests and assignments to fix. Add to that the fact that my former students now own a book that is worthless (since all of my lectures and exams will come from the new book), and you see the dilemma here.

I have complete sympathy for your situation as a seller of the old textbook; maybe you can see now that we are in similar, though not the same, boat. How do you feel about the whole thing?

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Putting money in a bag with holes

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

You wouldn’t put money in a bag that wasn’t sewn up correctly. If it had big, gaping holes, your cash would fall right out, right? If you wouldn’t do that with your finances, why would you put your college education in the same pickle? You know, you work hard but not very hard and get the assignments done but not very well.

Why would you waste your time doing things halfway? I had a student recently who had the gift of being mediocre, at best. His bag was so full of holes that he had difficulty keeping his mundane writing assignments turned in on time. He juggled numerous tasks but did none of them well enough to rate anything higher than a C. Apparently, he was fine with being average. When the end of the term came, he was very, very close to the next grade, but hadn’t done quite enough to warrant my curving his grade. So I didn’t.

On a completely unrelated topic, I recently visited some open houses when visiting in Florida this past month. I went into a newly-constructed house and was amazed at the poor quality finishes they used on an otherwise nice-looking house. The builder had the opportunity to build the retirement home of a lifetime for someone but he had made the decisions to use Formica instead of granite, linoleum instead of hard wood, and Bath Fitter tubs instead of tile.  With those cuts in mind, I wondered how the home itself was constructed. Did he do everything on the cheap? I’m willing to bet that he did. His bag was full of holes and those holes showed.

I went to another open house, where I viewed a one million dollar home. Sadly, that bag was full of holes, as well. The owners had made some very unwise design decisions, resulting in a conglomeration of rooms that were oddly shaped and painted in strange colors (who does BRIGHT, neon orange in a home they want a million dollars for? This owner, apparently!).

Do you have a bag of holes for your cash or do you do each job to the best of your ability? This is really your call, you know.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Planning Backwards

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

I had some students ask me recently how to plan their group project. I would suggest that they begin at the end result and then plan backwards.

For example, let’s say you have a group project due in one month. Today is the 1st, in this example. When do you want to have the document finished? (I suggest at deadline of two or three days before it’s due, to give you time to let the dust settle). Now, instead of having a due date of the 30th, you have given yourselves a deadline of the 27th.

When do all of the team members need to have their part of the document ready for the person who is putting it together?  Let’s day that you want to give the compiler three days to do that, so now your due date for your own part of the final draft is the 23rd.

When do individuals need to have their research completed? So that you all have plenty of time to discuss what you have found (and because everyone is busy with work, family, and school projects), let’s say that you want a one week lead time for that. Your due date for that part of the project is now the 16th.

When should you begin to look for research? It may take you two weeks to look down rabbit trails and ask the professor for clarification, so now your personal due date is the 2nd. That is in two days, so you better get to work with your partners and figure out what it is you are going to talk about. You only have two days to decide, so start work on this today!

Would this system work for you? What suggestions could you add to it?

Best,

Dr. Sheri

When you do what you do, make sure you do it right

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

As you know, I teach at three different colleges. My students range from first year freshmen to graduate students and everything in between. No matter their year in college, they sometimes share a common problem: they don’t follow the directions.

One thing about college, and about work life, it is important to give your boss what he or she is looking for. It’s kind of like being a wedding planner. If the bride wants pink carnations and the planner delivers orange roses, the bride is not going to be happy. If the groom wants everyone in black tuxedos and they show up wearing purple shorts, things are not going to go well. If the couple wants chicken and steak at the reception and the caterer delivers fish, that is not a good thing.

Likewise, when your professor gives you specific instructions, why do some students decide to “to their own thing?” Before you begin an assignment, read the directions. Then read them again. Do not wait until the night before an assignment is due to do this reading, or nothing will make sense (see a previous blog on this topic). Read through any announcements your instructor has made, to see if things have been clarified (some announcement postings are predicated upon the professor being asked a question repeatedly because things are not clear to your classmates).

As you complete an assignment, check through your document to make sure that you did everything that was required, and then post it.

Have you run into a situation where you did not follow the instructions? What happened?

Best,

Dr. Sheri

When the end of the semester comes and you are so close to the next grade

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Sometimes you find that you have worked SO hard all term long and here you are at the end with a grade that is SO close to the next higher grade. What do you do?

Well, if you have taken every extra credit opportunity all semester long, you might talk to the professor about his or her willingness to curve your grade. You might offer to do additional extra credit (this does not work in graduate school, by the way, because there is no extra credit after undergraduate classes).

I suggest that you write a very nice, non-threatening email to your professor. Do not kiss up to the professor (absolutely NO Eddie Haskell here). Discuss how much you learned from the course and that you feel it will be helpful in your future academic or professional endeavors.

The result MIGHT be that your professor MIGHT curve your grade…..or not. In any case, be gracious and do not tell the professor off. In the past, I have curved an occasional grade or two, but do not expect me to curve and give you a letter of recommendation if you are mean.

Have you ever been in this situation? How did you handle it?

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Traveling Tips for going from the US to the UK

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit the United Kingdom. It was awesome but there are some issues that I would have loved to know about before I went. Here they are for your perusal:

Just because you have an electrical adapter, it does not mean that it will work with your appliances. I whipped out my American to UK adapter, only to fry my electric rollers and hair dryer. I was too frightened to use the adapter after that, so we bought two more adapters in England, one for my cellphone and one for my Apple laptop. I also bought some electric rollers in country. I threw my original curlers out once we got back because they were fried enough to not work anymore.

Your hotel may not have any air conditioning, depending on where you go. It was 90 degrees and humid in North Cornwall, which made for some uncomfortable nights. The management loaned us two fans but it was still rather warm for two Americans who are used to turning on the air conditioning at the drop of a hat or at a temperature rising above 70 degrees. Plan the time of year that you travel accordingly.

Hotels usually have hair dryers so you can leave yours at home, but they do not usually have Bibles so take yours if you want to do a Bible study while in country. Where are the Gideons when you need them?

The back roads in England are very narrow. Big cars do not do so well with very narrow roads, but the English are very considerate drivers. One of you will have to stop and wait if you are on a narrow lane and someone else is coming. Take turns. Trucks automatically win. If the pavement says “slow,” it really means “good luck with this one!” The word is usually painted on a road that is really only one lane but is pretending to be two.

The walls of the road (yes, they actually have 10 or 12 foot high walls on country roads) are vine-covered but they are hiding the fact that there is brick or stones underneath those vines. Don’t hit them.

If you get lost or are unsure of directions, the English are very happy to help, so ask them for assistance. Keep in mind that you may not understand what they are saying the first time around. Smile and be polite and ask them to repeat what they said.

Your car may not have a GPS, so you may wish to use your phone’s system to get where you are going because it will use your dialect.

The English love roundabouts. They use them a lot. The Twilight Zone of roundabouts was on our journey; it had five exits, each of which had its own five exit roundabout. We turned around and went somewhere else, in order to avoid it. If you see a sign that says “give way,” it means “yield.”

Some machines, like coin-operated washing machines, will only take new pound coins. The old pounds have a slightly different shape, so know which one you will need before converting all of your money to pounds in order to wash your clothes. Sometimes machines within a launderette (as they are called) will vary as to which coins they will accept, so ask the proprietor or read the signs above the machines.

Pounds are pretty easy to figure out, but the other coins might not be. I just gave up and treated a pound like a dollar (which it wasn’t) in order to have some sense of what I was paying for things. If you buy things in the airport, you can get a discount if you say you are flying outside the European Union. You may have to show your boarding pass to prove where you are going.

I hope you find my suggestions helpful. What tricks of traveling abroad have you used?

Best,

Dr. Sheri

I Can’t Post My Assignment: What Do I Do Now?????

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Every once in a while, it is difficult or impossible to post an assignment to your online course. What are you to do?

The first thing is to email the professor a copy of your assignment BEFORE the due date, even if it is just a few minutes before the due date. That way, the instructor will know that your assignment is ready on time. Do not email me a blank document, hoping to buy more time. (The student then claims, ten hours later, to have sent me the wrong document and here is the final paper….which he or she just started writing after the original email was sent. Don’t try this; I have seen it before.)

Next, contact the IT department, to see if it is a problem with the course itself (I have known this to happen). Be prepared to capture and send a copy of the screen shot of your email and any response you get to your professor. You are covering your…….well, you know. We will give you the benefit of the doubt, most of the time, and not mark you late if we see that you really are trying to submit the document on time.

Finally, ask us if we can override the system and grade your document from the file exchange, if your course has one. (Again, I have seen this and I have done this.)

The important thing here is DO NOT WAIT. This type of thing does not get better with time and it generally does not fix itself. Do not wait until I am in a grading marathon at the end of a course to “remember” that you never got the grade from the first assignment. If you do, I am likely to grade you lower (not higher) on the assignment because I am ticked off that you waited so long to say something. The key is to jump on this immediately so we can get it taken care of.

Keep in mind that your professor is not an alien from another world who does not care about your grades. We are usually willing to work with you, if you show yourself to be a reasonable, intelligent person who cares about his or her grades. To that end, keep track of your grades and let the instructor know immediately if something seems out of whack.

What has been your experience with posting an assignment? Any horror stories you would care to tell?

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Destination Weddings are not for the Faint of Heart

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Have you ever been to a destination wedding? I went to one recently and discovered something interesting: the destination is a place that the bride and groom want to go to, but the guests, not so much.

We were in the wilds of New England, where the bride and her family loved to go when she was growing up. The groom was not so enamored of the place, but he was enamored of the bride, so he went.  Folks, my idea of roughing it is the Hilton Garden Inn, not some backwater place with no television, no radio, no phones (cellphone availability was not available and texting only went through every once in a while), and no air conditioning on a humid 95+degree weekend in summer.

Lest you say that I should have forgotten the Internet while I was there, I was under contract to be available to my employers and did not have a choice about doing some work that weekend. I also call my elderly father four times a week and could not get through to him because of the lack of phone service.

Here’s an idea: how about if you share your nuptial vows where is does not take me an entire day and hundreds of dollars to fly into the place and another day to return home? Taking three days out of my life to watch you get married in a half an hour is just a bit much to ask, in my book.

I will confess that, if I had been emotionally close to the bride and groom, I would have been willing to shell out the time and money for what was actually a five-day celebration of their wedding. (I only went to three of the five days.)

What do you think of this topic? Do you find destination weddings as frustrating as I did this past weekend? I would love to hear your tales of woe!

Best,

Dr. Sheri