Scenes of fail

1. Student asks me to write a recommendation for a grad school she is applying to. Fine, good, I've done this before. Except. This time the whole process is online and automated: answer a bunch of questions, some as multiple choice ("Do you think this student is in the top ___ % of the class" with the choices being 5, 10, 25, and so on), some as short-answer type. Upload my letter of recommendation.

Hit "submit."

Get a cryptic error message.

Hit it again.

Check to be sure that Firefox plays nice with the site - yes, it's supposed to.

Check to be sure I answered all the questions fully, sometimes a site will hang up over your not submitting a phone number or something in the "right" way

Try again.

Fail again.

Wait a couple hours, try again.

Call the admissions office at the school. Get told, "Yeah, we know there's a problem. There used to be a warning on the front page that the site was down. It's not there now? Oh, I guess IT took it down while they were working on it. No, we don't know when it will be back up. Well, you can e-mail a copy of your letter to us, at least."

But, golly day: I spent at least 15 minutes filling the thing out, and now I can't submit it? Or I have to leave my computer on (and hope for no power failures) until such time as they fix the site?

Not. Cool. Especially not cool for having taken down the notification so unwitting professors don't know that the site will bonk when they try to submit.


2. I received 16 of 24 papers for one of my classes. Angry, I sent an e-mail blast essentially saying, "Get it in to me by 2 pm or it will be majorly docked; if it's not in by 5 pm, don't submit it at all."

This was after one of my students disavowed any knowledge that he was supposed to even WRITE the paper. It was in the syllabus. I gave a handout about it. I mentioned it in class numerous times.

At any rate, I guess a little success: four of those papers have now been submitted.

And someone asked me: Why do you care? Why do you get angry over unsubmitted papers? Isn't that just that many fewer papers to grade?

Well, sort of. But the problem is, in a lot of cases, I've found that saying, "I'm sorry, the deadline was yesterday at 5 pm. You cannot turn your paper in now" is never the end of it. I am met with:

a. Disbelief ("You never told me it was due!" Oh, pull the other one, it's got bells on)
b. Bargaining ("But it's just me. I won't tell anyone you accepted my paper late")
c. Tears
d. Anger
e. A call from mom, dad, spouse, kids, whoever the student thinks has some leverage
f. Once, a call from a Dean who told me the student in question was "special" and therefore I was to accept the paper late.

And the thing is: I have blocked out this evening and tomorrow morning to grade these. Finding time to grade late papers IS a burden. Each paper takes 15-20 minutes to complete reading, commenting on, and grading. Having late papers dribble in means I have that nibbling at my consciousness - another thing on the list of things to do, another thing to make time for.

And anyway,. it seems unfair to both the prof and to the students who busted their tails to get the thing in on time to try to wheedle a later deadline. But I get it every semester.

Don't get me wrong, I'm willing to help in cases of genuine distress. Someone was in the hospital? Okay, we can work something out (but I want to see some record that they genuinely WERE). Someone had a major family emergency? Okay. But I have minimal sympathy for the people who "just didn't get it done," considering that this was something they knew about the day they got the syllabus (back in AUGUST.)

What really gripes me is that a lot of the behaviors are things I'd never have pulled as a student. First off, I kept a calendar (this was back in the Dark Ages when calenders were printed on something called "paper") where I wrote every exam day, every due date, as soon as I knew them. And I looked ahead - what do I have in the next two weeks, what do I have in the next month? What long-term project do I need to be starting now?

And second, even if I HAD derped and forgotten something (which is like a nightmare of mine), I would have accepted that I derped and forgot something and it would negatively affect my grade. And I would maybe go and apologize to the prof for being an idiot about the deadline, but I'd never ask for an extension or leniency. Or, if I had a real documentable emergency that should permit an extension, I'd call or show up ASAP with documentation in-hand and the syllabus showing where it said "Because of Reason X, student can request an extension"

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the grade schools and high schools that "ignore" deadlines or allow all work to be handed in "whenever," with no deadlines, do students a disservice by failing to teach them discipline. And it does the future college profs of the college-bound students a disservice.

I am too old to have to pull an all-nighter to get something graded. That's why I set the deadlines when I do: so I can spread out the grading so it doesn't kill me. I don't understand why people don't get that.