You have two minor assignments left to turn in for a class. The professor has told you that turning in those two assignments aren’t going to change your grade. In this case an A. Would you still do them because you feel like you should complete the class, or would you say screw it, I’m done?
Each of the assignments will take about a half hour.
I’d end up doing them, because I’d be worried that the professor was giving me some kind of secret character test and penalize me anyway if I didn’t.
It all depends on whether you are there to learn stuff or to collect grades. If the latter then of course you shouldn’t do them. You might inadvertently learn something.
Unless I find the assignment particularly interesting for its own sake, no. So if it’s, say, writing 500 words on the epic poem BEOWULF, I’ll do it. If it’s the same length essay on the rhetorical devices employed by Donald Trump, hope.
I’d ask the professor for his advice.
This has, for me, gone both ways. One prof said, “Well, go ahead and do the assignment anyway,” and another said, “No real point in it.”
No way, I’m done.
In fall semester of my senior year, of college, one of my courses had a grading setup such that there were three midterm exams at the one-quarter, halfway, and three-quarter points of the semester, and then the final, though it was given during the official final timeslot, was just a fourth midterm that covered only the last quarter of the material. The policy was also that the lowest-scoring of those four tests was not counted. I checked my grades at the beginning of finals week, realized that I would get an A just based on the three midterms, and emailed the professor to confirm that that policy still applied if you didn’t turn in one of the tests at all. His response: “Correct. Have a merry Christmas!” So I did.
But the secret test of character could be about your time management skills. If you already have a 99% average in the class, and the assignment can only change your average by 1 point, you’re only wasting your time and energy on it. The processor may be deciding whether to give you or s rival a recommendation for a job and will take doing the assignment as evidence of poor priorities on your part.
I love that autocorrect has made your professor a processor, Skald. (At least I assume it was autocorrect.)
If the professor’s that devious, the job rec is probably for a mook at Von Doom Industries, in which case I’d be toast the next time his nemesis attacks anyway. (If it’s for henchman, dragon lady, or accountant, I’d just straight up… put my rival in the debit column.)
He’s not really going to learn anything.
One is showing that you know how to do certain equations, the other is a paragraph on how you can use what you learned in the class, and how it factors in to your future college/career goals.
Or she might be annoyed that you are making her grade two additional assignments.
I didn’t originate the secret test if character notion.
And I can’t imagine the professor much caring. If anything, doing the assignment just adds to her workload for no reason.
I’m thinking a lot of instructors wpupd not feel obligated to grade said assignments.
It also put “Donald Trump” and “hope” in the same sentence, a rare occurrence.
My experience was about 40 years ago and involved a TA. I took a freshman English class on drama my senior year. The grading involved the best 3 of 4 papers. Since I was a senior and was able to write coherent sentences, my first 3 papers all got A’s, so I asked the TA about not doing the final paper. He wanted me to do it anyway. If I remember correctly, I found an old paper that mostly fit the subject, rewriting at little as possible. Not that it mattered, but it got an A, too.
So the point of my long, boring story - ask your instructor, not us.
I was taking a class and the instructor asked me and another student to remain after class. This was the last day of class before the final exam. He told us that since both of us had gotten only As on our mid-term exams, our homework assignments, and our lab assignments that there was no point in us taking the final exams or him having to grade them. So you’ve earned your As in my class. Good work and take care of yourselves.
Unless your instructor checks the names BEFORE he grades the assignments, it’s an extra 2 assignments for him to grade. He’s doing both you and himself a favor by not requiring them.
In my 9th grade history class, I had managed to rack up enough extra credit that I could have completely skipped the final and still gotten an A. I took it anyway.
As for sparing the professor the trouble of grading the test, if you’re doing that well on the course thus far, then you’re probably going to do well on the final, too. And correct answers are really easy to grade, at least in my field. In fact, I think they probably work out to a net negative amount of effort: Grading bad test after bad test can be rather soul-crushing, and it helps me keep my spirits up to have the occasional good one mixed in there.
All that said, though, if you don’t need it, then you don’t need it. And speaking as a professor, I certainly wouldn’t have any hard feelings if a student opted out. I know you’ve got plenty of other ways to spend your time. Heck, even if it would make a difference to your grade but you decide that a B is good enough, well, that’s your decision.
I had a numerical analysis class where the prof told us we didn’t have to take the final exam if we didn’t want to; we could stick with whatever grade we had going into the final instead. I waved good-bye at that point and I’ve never regretted my choice for a second.
I would probably do the assignment, but I am a nerdy grade grubber, lol.
I showed up for my Anatomy and Physiology final, only to have my name and 2 others called out as exempt from the final exam. The looks on the rest of my classmates faces will haunt me forever.
I had a similar experience, except at the beginning of the year, the professor told the whole class explicitly that if we got As on our first three papers there was no reason to do the fourth, please don’t hand one in. I got a 95%, 97%, and 100% on my first three papers from a professor who said that she gave 100% maybe once every four years. So I didn’t do the fourth paper. The papers were graded on an adjusted class average. Sometimes a 94% was a B, and sometimes an 88% was a B, but 60% was always passing, and a 98% was always an A, so it was possible, albeit highly unlikely, for every single person to get an A, and it was also possible for no one to fail.*
Anyway, the fact that the professor has told you this sounds to me like he or she is saying “Don’t do the assignments.” My parents were college professors, and they don’t play games like giving “character tests.” Besides, if you were explicitly told you had an A without the assignments, and the your final grade was a B+, you’d have a grievance.
*I had a high school teacher who graded on a true class average, which meant you could get an 80% on a test, but fail if it was the lowest grade in the class. It was Chemistry, a difficult subject for me, so I switched to a different teacher, because I was pulling a D in the class even though I was sweating blood over it. I got a B from the other teacher, and didn’t kill myself for it.