What is the least I can do to pass this course?

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

“What is the least I can do to pass this course?” Yes, that is a question I was asked by a student just this morning. Are you kidding me?

So this gal, a graduate student, doesn’t want to do her best. She doesn’t want to excel, she just wants to barely scrap by. Again, are you kidding me? She is fine with being the “Cream of the Crap” rather than the “Cream of the Crop.” How did she get this far in the first place?

Students, this is not the way to impress your professor. So what does someone want to do when he or she gets into college? Respect your classmates and your school by always doing your best. I have an undergraduate student right now who is the antithesis of the previously-mentioned gal.

He is engaged in every discussion board. When his first postings did not meet the standards for the course, I told him and he did something about it. He is a hard worker, asks questions if he doesn’t understand something, and always strives to do his very best. When he gets feedback, he thanks me for helping him improve, not in an Eddie Haskell way, but sincerely. He is a model student.

So, what is going to happen to Miss Let Me Get By? I don’t know for sure but experience tells me that she’s going to ask for an extension of all deadlines and that, when she does turn something in, it will be done on the cheap. That is, it will barely meet the requirements and will be poorly done. But then, that’s her goal. Go figure.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Picking Tenses

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

One thing I see frequently as a college professor is students who switch tenses. One moment, they are talking about something that has already happened and the next minute they are in the present and sometimes even go into the future. In the same sentence. Whoops!

Here’s the key: If you are reporting on something that has already happened, put it in the past tense. For example, let’s say that you are writing an essay about how your group did on a group project for the class. It has already happened, so it is in the past. Perhaps you might report “our team worked together quite well.” You would not say “our group is working together quite well” because it already happened. The first example says that you already did your group project, while the second sentence suggests that you are still working on the project.

If you will continue to work with the team but you have already done one project, you might write something such as “our team worked very well together on our first assignment. We will continue to collaborate in the second assignment.” This indicates past and future tenses, since you already did something and you will do something else in the future.

To say that you did something and you are doing something now, you might write “our team worked together very well on the first project and we are already collaborating on the second project.” This is past and present tense, since you did something and you are still doing it.

The person in this picture is walking from the past, is in the present, and is walking towards the future.

I hope this helps!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

 

Diversity at college

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

One thing about college: it is a diverse place. When I stepped onto a college campus for the first time in years, it was a big surprise to find that my instructor was a female African American with a Ph.D. I was a female, white, lowly freshman. Maybe that doesn’t sound too weird yet, but we were the same age and had both grown up in the south during segregation. That’s where our similarities ended.

My schools got the brand new textbooks; hers got our old, worn out ones. When I went to the doctor, I entered the medical clinic through the front door and sat in a large, cheerful waiting room. African Americans walked down a narrow sidewalk and entered through the back door. I never saw their waiting room and I noticed that I never once saw an African American in the hallways, walking to the exam rooms.

There was a lovely park where my friends and I played. We had a brand new silver water fountain. The fountain for African Americans was brown and looked like it had been hit with a baseball bat.

When I took the Greyhound bus to visit my grandparents, I sat in the front of the bus, except when there were no available seats. There was a bright yellow line on the floor, about 2/3 of the way back. We knew who sat there, next to the bathroom. Every time the bathroom door was opened, the scent of …well, you know what, permeated the bus.

I’m glad things are different now.  These days, many different folks are on the college campus. You will run into folks who agree with you and people who argue with you. Discussion is healthy. Keep that in mind and let others have their say in turn. Respect is the key. Enjoy the diverse perspectives others share. Don’t be threatened by it.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

 

Hang in there, buddy!

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

it’s the time of the semester when you might have just taken your first exam. Let not your heart be troubled. You can overcome a bad first grade, in most cases.

If your first exam was worth 10% of the grade, you still have 90% of the grade to win or lose. If that 90% shows a great improvement, then the instructor might be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. You might not get an A in the course, but you never know.

How much, if any, extra credit does your instructor give? Take him or her up on the offer. (It’s only allowed at one of the three colleges where I teach.) I have a policy of keeping track of who writes the extra credit. At the end of the term, if someone has made a repeated effort and turned in all the extra credit available, I take that into consideration when doing final grading. It’s no guarantee of a grade but I know someone who had an F in a course (not one of mine) who had made all kinds of effort and the teacher gave that person a C.

If the instructor has said that all exams are a certain format, then the good news about the exam is that you know know how the teacher tests students. Keep that in mind as you prepare for the next test. Study, study, study and remember: this is a numbers game. You can win it, if you just hang in there!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Don’t go barking up the wrong Letter of Recommendation tree

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Every term about this time, I get requests for letters of recommendation. Students need them for acceptance into the college they’ve always wanted to go to or for their dream job. Some students will get them; others will not because they are barking up the wrong tree.  Why is that so? Let’s talk.

Students who are always on time for class and turn in assignments that are done to the best of their ability will most likely get letters. Here’s a description of those who won’t:

Student who do the least amount of work at the last minute. If a posting has a minimum requirement of five sentences, they will write five sentences, which includes “nice posting,” “right on, man,” and whatever else they can say that says absolutely nothing. Why even bother if you aren’t going to do it right?

They turn things in after the due date, and then say they were crushed at work that week. It happens every week.

They argue over everything, berating the instructor who dares take 1/2 of one point off (out of 1000 points for the entire term).

They don’t prove reed anything because they think there writing is prefect. I’ve talked about this in the past. Folks, if you are this kind of student, don’t go barking up the wrong tree at the end of the term, to ask me for a letter. You won’t like the letter I would write, if you do.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

 

Getting settled but not settling for

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hi everyone:

Today’s blog posting is about adjusting to college life. Maybe it’s the second or third week of class. You’ve heard the instructor’s lectures. They seem pretty tame. Maybe you’ve even stopped taking notes because it all seems so easy. Yep, this isn’t going to be much different from high school, right? Nope, this is high school on steroids.

If you think you don’t need to take notes, you’re wrong. Nobody can possibly remember everything. One time (a very long time ago), I had a student who told me he never took notes because he didn’t need to. He was very smart, I will grant you that, but he ended up with a B in my class when he could have gotten an A. He got the lower grade simply because he never wrote anything down.

He didn’t seem upset by his B. He had the attitude of “whatever.” That was really too bad because, if he hadn’t settled for a B, he might be in graduate school today. Folks, you may be settled into your classes, but take this seriously. You might not even know you want to go to graduate school sometime in the future but why embarrass yourself in front of your boss by having to admit that you were only average in college and that you can’t get into a graduate program? Settle down but don’t settle for….

Best,

Dr. Sheri

College is a place where everyone is not just like you

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

One thing you will realize pretty quickly when you walk into a college classroom is that not everyone is just like you. That’s actually a good thing, since everyone brings their own point of view to the table and you can learn a lot of new things from them.

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Maryland College Park, one of the most difficult things for me to deal with was the prejudice of some of my classmates. They would take a look at me, and automatically think I was stupid because I was a “non-traditional student.” Sure, they were in college while in their teens and I was old enough to be their mother, but that was no reason to count me out.

One of the gals actually went so far as to tell me that her best friend hadn’t gotten into UMCP because of me. (I guess it had nothing to do with my 4.0 GPA in the college I had already completed. She deserved to be there in my place because she was young and I wasn’t, or so it seemed.) Funny thing: when Fox News covered my graduation five years later, she happened to be standing right next to me in all the graduation ceremony shots. I told her: “You’ll be on the news tonight because of me.” Funny, isn’t it? I thought it was hysterical.

When you see someone who doesn’t look like you- maybe their skin color is different, or they are older (or younger), or they are of a different faith, don’t turn your nose up from that person. Instead, use that opportunity to learn about someone who is different. You never know where that will lead. Maybe you will even end up on the nightly news (for a good reason).

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Fluff is good on pies but not so much in essays

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Well, I saw something new today: fluff beyond belief. Wait till you read about it. The student had to take seven articles and discuss them in a synthesis essay.  Here is a sample of what he wrote:

In the article The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, the authors Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young stated that “here is a direct quote that is shorter than the fluff that went before.” [Note: no page or paragraph number or year of publication were listed.] The article The Rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young  further says that here are five words that they said but that the student didn’t put in quotation marks. [Also note the lack of capitalization on the name of the article.] Therefore, I think that the article The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young was a really good article. [But what did it say????]

I think you get the point here. He kept going for four pages, dissecting the names of the articles and the authors’ names (he always had a multi-author article) but really saying very little.

So how should this have been handled? Mention the names of the authors once and then write  the following:

Crosby et al. (2018) contend “here is the quote” (p. 123).

If this is a synthesis, which the assignment called for, discuss the seven articles and then add your own take on each one and how that article will fit into your final assignment. Our assignments build on one another, so do the footwork ahead of time and you will have an easier time later on at crunch time.

As for fluff? Limit that to the top of pies.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Heading back to class

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

While students across the nation go back to school at various times, our students in Maryland are starting back tomorrow. Here are some tips to help smooth your transition.

Stay in touch with the instructor. If you have a question, please ask. But, when you ask, make sure that you communicate with the professor the way he or she prefers. One of the colleges where I teach has  a means of communication that goes right through the class page. It is horrid. Every term, I ask students to use my email address and every term only half of them listen to me asking them to never send anything through the class web page. Since I teach multiple sections or multiple classes, and because the system works so poorly, if I get your message at all, it will be difficult for me to figure out which class you are taking.

If you are taking more than one class with an instructor in the same term, do not think that it’s okay to submit the same work twice. That is self-plagiarism and will get you in big trouble. Yes, we will notice. I had that very thing happen just this afternoon. When they self-plagiarize, some students don’t even bother to change the course name on the cover page. Bad idea. One time, a student handed in a paper that was marked up. It was also graded by a colleague of mine. Come on! Was the kid really so lazy he didn’t think I’d notice? I noticed and so did the honor board.

Have a great semester. Let me know if you have any questions.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Say what you mean and mean what you say

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

This morning I was reading one of my favorite decorating magazines (I was a decorator for 23 years), when I noticed the text underneath an absolutely stunning house. The author was writing about front porches, which I happen to love. What was unlovable was what he said.

He said, “This doors-flung-open, arms-spread-wide greeting dissolves me immediately.” What???? That dissolving business sounds painful. I mean, we are talking about front porches here, aren’t we? What was this fellow thinking? What was his editor thinking?

Tell you what, my friend, this dissolving business sounds very painful and we just had our road resurfaced. All of the houses on my street have front porches, so if you’re going to dissolve over them, please do so elsewhere. The new road cost us a lot of money.

This said, please tell me what you’re going to tell me and leave the flowery stuff behind. Far behind, if you please.

Sometimes students think that throwing in a big word or two is helpful to their overall scholarship and academic writing. (Kinda like this last sentence- I didn’t need to use the word “scholarship” – I just wanted to impress you with my use of big words.)

A favorite word of undergraduate students is “within.” For example, the student will write “Within this paper, I am going to …..” Nope. You are going to write “in” your paper, not from within it. (I once decorated a nine foot wreath- I was decorating from within, simply because I couldn’t reach across it.) Trust me, you are not jumping into your computer to write the paper from “within” anything.

Folks, keep it simple, keep it plain, and don’t dissolve into anything. If you absolutely must dissolve, please do it some place besides my street. Thanks.

Best,

Dr. Sheri