finishing the semester

Finishing strong

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Okay, you are at the end of your rope. You have almost made it through the semester but it is just so hard to finish things up. Surely missing a couple of small assignments won’t make a difference, right?

Wrong. I have a former student who decided to let her guard down at the very end of her time in my class. She had worked pretty hard and figured she would coast to the end.

That was not wise. She let go and let things ride….and almost did not graduate. She had two assignments that she told me she had decided not to do…and it made a difference between passing and not. It also became an issue because she had a job awaiting for her, but she couldn’t have the job without her degree.

So, she made a very quick decision that turning in something well after the due date and taking a chance on passing, even with a reduced score, was better than sitting out graduation, losing the job, and paying for the class again. That was very wise.

So hang in there, folks. Stick with the program and get the job done so that you won’t face the possibility that you won’t graduate and so that the job og your dreams won’t pass you by!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Finishing well or not at all

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hi everyone:

This is the time of the semester when many people just give up. I had a student recently who decided not to do the last two assignments. Then she realized that, by not doing them, she had flunked the class.  She came back to me and asked if she could complete them because flunking the class meant she would not graduate and the job she had waiting would no longer be hers.

What advice do you have for her? What do you think I should do in this situation? What do you think I did? Give me your thoughts and I will tell you how the scenario played out.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Finishing the semester strong

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Sometimes my students get tired before the end of the term. It can happen to anyone…..it happens to instructors when we have bitten off more than we can grade.

Hang in there, people. There will come a day when you totally forget whatever  is plaguing you now. If you quit, you may never remember why.

Don’t give up. Okay, so you had a bad breakup with the person you thought was your forever-one-and-only. It hurts. I get it. But are you willing to sacrifice an entire semester’s worth of work for someone whose name you might not remember in two years?

I had a 17-year-old student in one of my classes who cried every day before class for weeks about her recent loss of a boyfriend. It was the end of the world. He was her first boyfriend. He was the only man she would ever love. Of that, she was certain. The breakup happened at the beginning of the semester. By the end of the term, she had forgotten him and moved on. It happens. In spite of her pain, she hunkered down and got the class done. She finished with an A.

Life happens, but try not to let it get you off track.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

The end of the semester loometh

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

If you are like my schools, the end of the semester is coming up very fast. How do you get through it? Some students drink a ton of caffeine, but this is not really the way to handle the stress of term’s end. One of my favorite students came into class the other day; she was so hyped up on caffeine that I had to practically scrape her off the ceiling. This is a bad idea.

Why? Because, when she took the final exam, her results were less than stellar (usually, she majors in stellar). She will still end the semester at the top of the class, she could have finished even topper…..if that is even a word.

So, my advice is to avoid the caffeine as much as possible, study hard, and finish strong! You are on the home stretch- you can do this!

BTW, I would LOVE to hear from you but please use my name in your comments, so that it will be obvious you are not spam. I will reply!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

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