Why I Dumped the Due Date

I didn’t submit my assignment.  Can I still hand it in? 

My brother came into town unexpectedly this weekend, and I haven’t seen him in five years, so I didn’t get my paper done.

If I submit my work tonight, can I still get some points?

I’ve been really sick and haven’t been able to sit at the computer.  Do you want to see my doctor’s note?

I did the work but Blackboard wouldn’t let me upload it.

Need I go on?  We’ve all heard these excuses and many, many more.  And I didn’t even include any of the more outré ones: the alien abductions, the crises of the soul, one roommate murdered by another roommate. (I got that one once.)  There are as many reasons for not getting school work done as there are students enrolled at the college.  More, now that I think of it.  As I prepared to write this, I tried to think of an assignment where all my students met the deadline.  And I can’t think of one.  As Roseanne Roseannadanna would say, “It’s always something.”

So, how to cope?  The hard line, which a lot of instructors favor, is “No late work.”  So sorry that X happened, but the deadline is past and that’s the way it is.  But that’s not REALLY the way it is, in most cases, is it?  Maybe there is the rare teacher out there who won’t make accommodations for a student who has had to fly home expectedly for a funeral, or is dealing with an imminent medical crisis, or other such emergency.  Your class, your rules.  However, years ago I had a student who was being stalked by an ex and had been removed from her home by police one evening for her own safety. It happened to be the evening before a paper was due, and she didn’t get it done.  Am I not going to make an exception for that?  Of course I will.

So the next step back from that hard line is “No late work without a good excuse.”  Homicidal ex?  Good excuse.  Child diagnosed with leukemia?  You bet. Child in the emergency room with the flu.  Mmmm, maybe.  Oh, your first child died of pneumonia as an infant and you’re not coping well with the flu diagnosis?  Well then, fine.  Your family flew into town unexpectedly?  Sounds fun but you should have explained that you have to write that paper.  Your family flew in unexpectedly so you could spend one last weekend with your sister who will be deployed to Afghanistan next week.  In that case…

You see where I’m going with this.  The “No late work without a good excuse” rule means we put ourselves in the role of judging which excuses are good enough.  And I am VERY uncomfortable with that.  We deal with a large number of non-traditional students with families, jobs, health or socio-economic issues that affect their access to education.  Issues that I have been extremely lucky NOT to have to deal with.  I worked hard at school, of course, but compared to most of my students I had it ridiculously easy.  The point is, I’ve decided that I’m no longer putting myself in the position of judging a student’s priorities by my own standards.

And you can’t BELIEVE how much that has lessened my stress level.  This was a completely unexpected consequence of my shift in policy.  I figured, of course, that this would lightened the load for my students.  No more coming, hat in hand, to beg for an extension.  No more stressing over trying to get work done at the last minute.  Sure, great for them.  But for me?  Who know this was such a weight on my shoulders?  I love, love, LOVE telling someone, “Hey, no worries.  Just get it done,” instead of having to decide if it is fair to let student A have an extension and student B not.  Instead of having to keep track of who got that extension and who didn’t.  Instead of having to explain to student B (without violating privacy laws) why student A got that extension.  And best of all, I don’t have to hear the excuses at all. I don’t care to know about your bowel complaint and how it kept you in the bathroom all weekend.  Or the intricacies of your relationship with your boyfriend or whatever else it might be.  Just get the work done. 

I know, I know.  There are a LOT of objections raised whenever I explain this policy to other teachers.  It’s too hard to manage a class if students don’t all submit their work at the same time. Students aren’t mature enough to prioritize and will place playing video games or other frivolities over school work.  We’re training them for the real world where there are consequences for not meeting deadlines.  If you don’t enforce deadlines, students won’t work at the same pace and can’t get the most out of group work or the classroom experience.  All valid points that I’ll have to address in part two of this essay, since I’m way over my 25 sentence goal already.  But my core point is made.  Education belongs to the students. It is their own responsibility to decide how that education fits into their lives and what is most important to them at a particular moment.  Just get the work in when you can.