We are nearing the end of the semester and as a student I feel your pain, fellow students. I’m drowning in books, research papers loom overhead like dark clouds, and final exams threaten on the horizon. This is the time when all students decide to either do the difficult and large amount of remaining work or give up. (I’m going to do the work and I hope you will too). But despite the difficulties of this time for the students there is an equally (yet bizarre) mood for instructors. In the interest of honesty I’d like to explain the other side of the story.
Beyond being tasked with teaching (and generally having better attendance than their students), instructors will also have the chore of grading all of those final exams, written papers, other assignments and presentations. In the midst of this atmosphere a new phenomenon arises for instructors about this time during the semester and it repeats each semester without fail. If you hold office hours you will suddenly find students willing to visit during them. What’s more, these students are potentially students you’ve never seen before. Even if you’ve seen them with your eyes you’ve rarely seen their minds splashed across homework assignments in well-written sentences because many of these visiting students never turned those in. Who are these students?
Typically (and this is a broad generalization) these students have just now (during the last few weeks of class) figured out that in order to pass the class they needed to do some of the homework or obtain some of the lecture notes they missed because they weren’t in class. They’ve just taken a look at that syllabus and realized that the numbers just aren’t going to work out in their favor unless they’re able to make-up a substantial amount of the work they’ve missed over the semester (and, actually, this is a good thing to figure out before visiting with an instructor – much better than just knowing you’re doing bad and asking “is there anyway I can still pass?”). I’ll write more this week on this phenomenon, “strategies” for approaching your teacher, and expected outcomes. For now: do the work!