College

Heading into the home stretch!

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

For those of you in college, you are heading into the home stretch- the end of the semester. This is not the time to let your guard down. I have had students who were very, very close to the next highest letter grade, yet who chose to skip the last few days of class.

What does this say to the professor? It tells the instructor that you really don’t care about your education. Unless you have a huge emergency, show up until the bitter end! I once had a class of 17 students, 6 of whom chose to have a family emergency keep them from class on the same day (the final exam). What are the odds of this happening? Slim to none, I would argue. One of the girls admitted later that the entire family had been needed to take Grandma to the hospital. It turned out that Grandma was constipated. Was the girl really needed there for that????? Really?

I had a student recently who has lost several grandparents, all when something was due. Other students have told me that “oh, I wasn’t here the day it was due, so it’s not late.” Yes, it is. The syllabus clearly states that your failure to attend a class does not negate the due date. If you turn something in late, I lower the grade by one letter grade. Yes, I am tough, but your future bosses will be tougher. Get used to it now.

I hope you have a superb ending to the semester. I hope that your grades are stellar and that you are encouraged as you continue the journey of getting a college education. Not everyone goes to college, so you are special. You are a unique person who has a lot to offer; I wish you well.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Finishing the course from a position of strength

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

As my own teaching winds down for the semester, it seemed good to share with you how to finish your courses strong.

First, do the work! Do not make excuses; you have no where to go but with an “incomplete” and teachers don’t like the thought of having one student to check on over the holidays. Get your assignments done and turned in on time. Some instructors (like me) actually lower the grade by one letter if you are tardy with an assignment. Some professors (also like me) do not accept any work after the end of the semester.

Next, make sure that you have understood the assignment correctly. I had a student come into one of my speech classes recently and tell me he didn’t realize that we had a final speech due……that very day! He thought he had to write a paper, which is weird since it is a speech class. We’d only been talking about it, in-depth, for a month. Where had he been? Oh, yes, he’s the student who shows up late, if at all……Other times, he was in class but checked out, mentally.

Contact the professor in time to get a reply, if you have any questions about the assignment. Midnight the night before the assignment is due is NOT the time to email the professor with the question “So what is due tomorrow???” If you email me several days before the due date, I can see that you have waited almost until the last minute, but you still have time to do the work.

Do not wait until the last minute to do an assignment. At that point in time, you are in panic mode and you can’t really hear anything being said because you are so busy thinking “oh, my, what can I do now?” to listen to what you are being told.

Do the work in time to review it before you turn it in.  Always look over the assignment instructions one last time before you submit the assignment, to make sure that you actually did the assignment correctly. (Once I was getting ready to submit a document, only to realize that I had written the wrong paper. Because I still had two days before it was due, I had time to go back and fix it, re-writing it into the required paper.)

Once you have submitted the assignment, do not bug the professor about a quick grade. After speeches yesterday, three different students came up and wanted to know their grades right then. I told them I needed to meditate on the grade before giving it. That was apparently the right thing to say because they all walked away. I don’t meditate on grades, I calculate them in my own office, without distractions like a student standing over me. It’s too easy to make a mistake with someone breathing down my neck.

I hope these tips help you get the best grades ever!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Preparing for Final Exams

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

This is the time of the semester when final exams take place. You need to be prepared for them, since they can have a profound effect on your final grade for a class.

First, begin preparations the first day of class (too late for some of you for this semester, I know!). Take good notes, making sure that you make a special note of anything the professor seems to dwell on. A well-organized professor who has taught a course numerous times probably has the final exam already written, so he or she will make sure that a particular topic is covered in class, to help you prepare for the test.

Second, make sure that you set aside time to study, really study. Stopping numerous times for a snack, to do the laundry, to text with friends, or talk on the phone is not studying. Set a timer for a specific length of time that you plan on studying and turn it off when you walk away to do something else. While you may insist that you are still studying as you walk over to the refrigerator, your mind is probably on that leftover pumpkin pie, not the subject at hand.

Next, make sure that your study area is well-lit and free from distractions. You may have to go to the library to study, if they have a quiet study area. Some libraries are noisier than staying at home and having your kid brother practicing his saxophone while you work.

Fourth, do not wait till the last minute to study. Cramming a lot of information into your brain over a short period of time is a very bad idea. A friend of mine pulled an all-nighter in college. When she arrived at the exam, she was so tired that she couldn’t remember her name. She left without taking the test.

Finally, make sure that you eat breakfast before the test and that you have had adequate sleep the night before. You cannot do your best if you are struggling to stay awake or have a growling stomach.

Good luck on your finals!

Dr. Sheri

 

How to avoid flunking your online class

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hi everyone:

A student emailed me today, in a panic about failing the writing class I am teaching at a major online college. Here is what I told her about writing an assignment:

Please read all instructions carefully before you begin to write. Please write the document that the instructions call for. Look at each assignment as a separate and distinct document and do not mix them up.

Write one of them at a time, making sure that you have followed the instructions to the last degree before you submit them.  Ask questions as they come up, after you have read the instructions through numerous times.

Do not wait until the last minute to write an assignment because the panic mode clicks in and you cannot think clearly.

I hope this helps you as you navigate the courses you are taking.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Showing up for class on time versus showing up late

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Today’s blog discusses the early-bird approach to  class attendance versus the always-tardy look at school.

Why should you show up early? If this is one of your major classes, you have the ear of your professor before the other students arrive. Based on some classes I have taken, this means that you get to talk with him or her before the other 500 students get there. Even if you are attending a community college that only has 25 students per class, this still gives you the chance to get your questions answered personally.

You never know what nugget of information you will learn in these before-the-class chats. One of my friends is an actor who is currently attending college in New York. By showing up early for every class, he has had the opportunity to learn from his instructors who he needs to know to get that all-important first Broadway audition.

You also get to know the teacher better, and he or she gets the opportunity to learn who you are. This can be a very good thing, especially if you hope to get into graduate school someday, or if you need a letter of recommendation for a job.

Having students turn up before class begins is also an encouragement to the professor. It lets us know that you enjoy our class. It tells us that you are serious about your education and that you are willing to take responsibility for it. This can lead us to give you the benefit of the doubt if there is ever a problem.

What about always showing up late? Well, that tells us that you have poor time management skills, which means we probably won’t be giving you a letter of recommendation at any time in the future.

It also means that you don’t care enough about what we are saying to come to our lectures on time. I have had students who missed my lectures and then asked me what they missed. Don’t do that. I am not going to repeat my lecture for you privately.

People who turn up tardy irritate the professor, miss announcements, do not hear explanations and clarifications of assignments, and lose points off of their final GPA in all of my classes. I take attendance (or am marking you present on my roster) at the beginning of class; in my courses, two tardy appearances equal one absence and one absence removes 1 point from your final GPA. I have had students who earned an A but got a C because of their attendance behaviors.

People who show up late frequently do not have their work done. I love that old saying “failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”

I hope you have found these tips handy. Best of luck as you navigate college!

Dr. Sheri

College idea of the day: Writing Centers

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

College writing centers can be a wonderful asset to the beginning college student. When I began college as a nontraditional (e.i. “older”) student, I had been out of the classroom for many, many years. I hadn’t written an essay since high school. Even though I was considered a pretty decent writer back then, I had forgotten many of the basics of essay writing.

One of my teaching assistants had the presence of mind to suggest I try the writing center (which is an asset that most colleges I have come across have available today) after giving me a D on the first paper I wrote for her. This formerly-A student in writing classes was totally shocked. After I picked my pride up off the floor, I hightailed it over for the first-available appointment. What a godsend that was!

Although writing centers will not write the paper for you, they will give you guidance as to where you are going wrong. You may need some remedial help in the form of a class or two, but they can work on your form and sentence structure that can help in class right now.

Do you struggle with subject/verb agreement, passive versus active voice, or semi-colon use? They can help. When do you hyphenate a word? Are you using a word that sounds like another word but is wrong (“are” for “our,” “there” for “their,” and the like). Go to the writing center. This is an asset worth talking about! Good luck!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

P.S. My grades went from a D to an A in a single semester- this strategy works!

 

More college ideas: taking online classes

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Taking an online course can be daunting. Perhaps you are not great with computers. Maybe you have the great vanishing professor (who rarely shows up for class and takes forever to answer your frantic emails).

One thing is for sure: online classes take a great deal of personal discipline. Here are some tips for getting through them successfully.

First, set aside every day to check on your class. Yes, every day. This is because your instructor may publish an announcement that directly impacts the assignment you are doing. Perhaps the instructor has gotten a boatload of questions about something related to the assignment. Maybe the class has just been re-done and the Powers That Be are still working out the bugs. You need to be completely up-to-date with this.

Check the announcement page of your class page. Then check under “Ask the Professor” to see if someone else in the course has a question for which you might appreciate knowing the answer.

Next, look over the syllabus carefully and highlight on your calendar when all the Discussion Board postings are due (both the initial thread and the replies). How many classmates are you supposed to reply to? How long does your reply have to be? (Note: I have a student right now who has completely ignored the length requirements for discussion board postings and replies. As a result, she is failing that aspect of the course when she could be acing it.)

Special note: do not feel the need to reply to every classmate’s posting. That can drive your professor to distraction, since we get notified if there is a single posting…..now multiply that  by the number of students in the class. If there are 25 students (this is pretty normal) and they are each required to post an original thread and two replies per topic, that is 75 postings for the instructor to respond to. If each student replies to 5 other students, the number goes up very quickly. Please, be kind!

Make sure that you look through the Content section of your class page, the assignments section, the discussion board, and any other section that your school has. Note all assignments and look over the instructions carefully. With my online writing classes, one assignment builds on the one before it. If you skip even one assignment, your whole grade is in jeopardy.

Be kind to your classmates as you reply to their postings. Do not say “great post” to someone who has done less than the bare minimum but do not be rude either. Telling him or her “wow, you really messed up, dude” will not help. Make suggestions if you wish to guide the other student, but make sure that you are not trying to take the class away from the professor.

Finally, set aside time to do the assignments. I once had an entire class of folks who waited until the night before an assignment was due to begin it. They would send frantic emails and messages for clarification in the middle of the night as they scurried to get things done. Guess what? I was asleep.  By the time I saw their emails, the assignment was already late. I have been there, checking in every day, for the entire week, but not on Saturday night at 11 pm, Sunday at 1 am, or…..well, you get the idea.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

 

How to be well organized in college

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

I speak to you today as someone who did two majors at the same time while also home schooling, being active in my church,  and running a small business. How did I keep things straight? By using a calendar the way in which I am about to share.

Purchase an academic calendar at an office supply company- get one that has an entire month at a glance. As soon as you get your syllabi from your various professors, enter all assignments (including reading and labs) in your calendar. Use a different color ink for each class. When you have a major assignment due, highlight it in yellow ink.

Next, enter all family and work obligations in the calendar in a different color ink. Your family needs to have some time set aside for them, so you do need to put them in your calendar, as well.

While some people insist that their cellphone will tell them when something is due, this method never crashes, is never out of cellphone range, and does not require electricity. Yes, it is old-fashioned, but, if you look at the calendar on a daily basis, you will never be caught off guard by an assignment. I would check each assignment off as I did it, being careful not to obscure the assignment itself, in case I needed to refer back to it.

This method got me through 5 years of undergraduate work, 1 1/2 years of master’s degree efforts, and five years for a Ph.D.  I only missed one assignment once- and that is because I left the assignment off of my calendar. I now teach for three colleges and guess how I keep track of which week each college is in and what is due from my students? Right, my friend, the calendar!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

More college tips

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

It is sometimes challenging to take off my college-instructor hat, so here is another tip for preparing for college assignments. First, the news: college still has homework.

One time I was teaching a Saturday course for a local community college. One of my students, an older woman, listened to my syllabus presentation and discussion of homework. After I finished, she said, “But I thought signing up for a Saturday course meant there wouldn’t be any homework.” I quickly got her straight on that matter!

Make sure that you understand the homework assignments. Talk to the instructor before or after class, email him or her, or call his or her office. Do not walk up to the instructor on the due date and say “I didn’t understand the assignment.” This makes you look rather dull of mind. If you don’t know something, ask. It is not the professor’s fault you are still getting up to speed on things.

Best,

Dr. Sheri