ASK FOR HELP DAMMIT

[gremcint]

I am a Teaching assistant as well as a retail drone now. I'm getting tired of one thing happening over and over again, students not asking for help when they need it. I can tell you are not getting it, I can tell you need extra help, but when you don't come to lecture, don't come to scheduled computer lab time(programming class), don't come to my office hour and don't email me or the teacher then you only have yourself to blame.

Writing comments on the tiny amount of work you do submit about how frustrated you are with the course gets the world's smallest violin from me if you never asked for help.

And when I give you a chance to redo an assignment and tell you to ask me or the teacher for help and you turn in something that doesn't even work without asking for help then don't get pissed off when I can only increase your mark from 16% to 34%

I'm sorry but for obvious reasons I'm keeping this vague.

[smileyeagle1021]

Reminds me of one of my profs in college. He had a policy, and he made it vocally known, if you make it to every lecture (or let him know in advance you can't make it, even if it is only calling 5 minutes before to let him know you are sick), if you make a habit of showing up during office hours, and you turn in all your assignments, he had no problem raising you to the next letter grade, and believe me, that is the only way you get an A in that class is having him make that adjustment afterwards (his assignments and tests were absolute killers, but damnit if you didn't learn the subject). However, you missed a single class or a single assignment, and you got what you got and no amount of pleading was changing that.

[Pixilated]

But asking for help would require effort on their part!

Sounds similar to a prof I once had: he said if you turned in an assignment late, without a viable excuse, he wouldn't accept it, period. One girl in the class had chronic health problems but she always kept him updated and so had no trouble getting extensions and whatnot. One day we were standing around waiting to get into the classroom and one kid said, "I wonder what'll happen if I don't turn in the paper [due that Friday] until Monday." Another older student and I looked at each other and I said, "He won't accept it."

Kid: "What??"

Me: "He said that at the beginning of the year and it's on the syllabus. If you try to turn something in late without a good excuse he won't except it, period."

Needless to say, the kid flipped out. The other older student and I just went and moved away.

I've been sick lately and have missed a couple of classes as a result. I always email the teacher to let them know I'm out because of illness.

[PepperElf]

i can't remember if my last college had any bonuses for attending all classes, but you were allowed to miss a couple of classes... and then your grade would drop per each miss.

and yeah i had teachers who had policies of "late=0". and even sick ... we could still turn in our coursework cos we turned it in via computer anyway. although i am sure if we contacted the teacher first there would be assistance etc.

[SongsOfDragons]

I had a severe ear infection in my second year of uni and I had to get I think three extensions on assignments that were due around that time. I'm very glad I did, too...

[RootedPhoenix]

Teachers typically give you help/work with you, etc., but they certainly aren't mind readers...nor are they responsible for your grade. If you do 50% of the work, and your excuse is "I don't wannna~~", then you'd fail any class I'd teach!

(I'm not a teacher, btw.)

[Grendus]

Is this a freshman class? Just curious, I'm finding that mentality is less common in the later years (not gone, but most either wise up or wash out), but it could just be the courses I'm taking.

[Sapphire Silk]

My policies vary depending on where I'm teaching.

For my ADN students, there is no extra credit and I don't accept late work. You get what you get. I don't bump grades for perfect attendance. I can't; a policy like that would allow a below marginal student to pass and take the NCLEX. Students who can't meet objectives should not progress.

For my BSN students, the online university allows one week, then the work is not accepted. Late work gets a 20% deduction. I'm encouraged to accept all late work because the focus is on student success, but I don't have to. Generally, if the student has a good reason for turning in work late, and asks for an extension then I'm pretty liberal.

I don't deviate from the grading rubrics though. No matter what I say, every term someone doesn't read the rubrics before starting their work and doesn't include something they is essential for the grade. I've had papers with grade's as low as 34% as well. One student complained I was grading too hard on APA and composition and told me, "this is a nursing class not a grammar class." But getting a BSN is about moving up the professional ladder, and you have to be able to write in a professional manner . . . which means using good rules of English composition.

[KhirasHY]

When I take classes (on the rare times I can afford it), I tend to record every class with those LiveScribe pen/journals, which work awesome. When other good students miss a class, I make it a point to give them a website where they can go to listen in to the class, so they wouldn't miss anything. We had a few slackers who would miss every other class and do almost no work, they always got mad at me when I wouldn't give them the same info.

The last teacher I had was also very clear on day one: "If you want to fail, don't show up...70-80% of my tests are from lecture material, not from the book, so you need to be here to pass it. I'm not malicious, I won't try to make you fail, but I have no problem doing it either."

I liked that guy a lot...

[WIphone_lady]

During my sophomore year, I had two family funerals to attend, right at midterm of BOTH semesters. Because there were exams and papers due, I had to get extensions on everything. I don't know what other schools are like, but we had to notify the Dean's office....they would pull up your schedule and let your professors know....this way you couldn't be penalized for missing an exam or turning a paper in late.

[BeeMused]

And then there's the other type of student who wants to get everything handed on a golden plate, only to complain that the plate wasn't made from rose gold.

[Miss Fatale]

Another teacher friend and I were just discussing this. The worst part about teaching is that they don't ask for help....and then often blame you for their failure.

Keep fighting the good fight.

[Sapphire Silk]

Another teacher friend and I were just discussing this. The worst part about teaching is that they don't ask for help....and then often blame you for their failure.

Keep fighting the good fight.

What I hate is when I try to communicate with a student about class issues they need to fix to get a good grade . . . and I get dead air. And THEN they complain when they don't get good grades.

I had a student last term whom I gave the same instruction to for every project (they're submitted online) for how the university wants students to format work. She got it wrong every time. I'd give her a chance to fix the formatting before I graded it. She'd resubmit it still wrong multiple times before I'd just give up and grade the assignment . . . and deduct points for poor formatting.

[Chromatix]

Ah, rose gold - which because it contains a substantial fraction of copper, is actually less valuable than pure gold. But it does look nice.

At least some of my professors would accept late submissions, but deduct a proportion of the mark accordingly. If it was more than a few days late, you'd get nothing. It seemed fair enough.

At one point I had a group project with three other students, one of whom did nothing until the very last minute, and then submitted something that we couldn't use (it didn't even compile in isolation, and there were bugs left after I fixed the compile errors). We'd split the coding work three ways, and assigned a student who'd admitted he wasn't good at coding to do testing and documentation instead. By then, I'd picked up his slack by doing it for him, and then done bonus work on top - so we wrote in the group report what had happened. I'm reasonably sure the slacker didn't get any credit for that project, whereas the tester did.

[Phantasmagoria]

This definitely sounds familiar and is bringing back memories of past headaches!

My personal 'favourite' lazy student trick:

1. Don't turn up to classes so you don't have the material for the exam
2. Do no revision before the exam
3. Totally eff up the computer during the exam and insist 'it just did this by itself' rather than telling the GTA what you did so she can fix it
4. Continue trying to muddle through the exam with a computer that's freaking out rather than restarting as you were told
5. Sit and stare at the computer for half an hour without moving but tell the GTA you're fine when asked if you need help
6. Finally restart your computer five minutes before the end of the extra time you were given because of the initial problem
7. Fail the exam because you did nothing and refused to ask for help when you needed it, and to listen to it when you got it

8. The final and most important step: Email the module tutor to tell them the GTA didn't help you for ages, she couldn't work out how to fix a simple problem, you had to restart the computer and this REEEALLY stressed you out so you couldn't concentrate, you weren't given enough extra time, and it's totally not your fault you failed, it's all the fault of that awful woman who didn't do the test for you.

Bonus points for writing 'I've run out of time but I really do know the answer, and I did it in the classes, so can I have the marks please? :-)' at the bottom of the test paper.

I despair