(if this belongs in the pit, I apologize, I just didn;t find it ‘pit-worthy’.)
OK, so in addition to my school just ignoring what’s best for students, raising tuition, and being a general douchebag to everyone, I have found yet another thing to rant about.
OK, so one of my classes this semester is Modling and Analysis of Uncertainty, or MAU. It’s about how to model different randomness accoiciated with engineering and scientific measurments. Anyways, the homework for this class uses an online system called eGrade. We log into the system, select an assignment, and then do it online. It grades it, says what we got wrong, and we can try again with some things changed around to prevent us from just copy and pasting.
So I log in, and get a message basically saying there are no assignemnts. 'Huh?" I say. I know there is a homework due tomorrow, so I keep trying. I log out, back in. I close my browser, restart, everything I can think of. Then I remember. The homeworks are all due at midnight the day before class. Fucking retarded. I should be allowed to do the homework anytime I want before class. If I want to do it at one AM, that should be my right to do so. What nerve do they have telling me when it has to be done? Fuck them. Now I have a zero that I don’t deserve. I think I might do a little complaining on this one. There is no loigical reason for it to be due at midnight. I hate this school so much…
Well this happens all the time. I have assignments due at midnight all the time. So many Fridays I cant go out until midnight cause something is due. Its not really weird… and you knew about it, just forgot. Now you know…
I agree that assignments need deadlines, but I think that midnight of the previous day is absurd, especially at a college where many students don’t start their homework until after midnight. I really see no reason for it. Why not make the deadline 8 AM? Or two hours before class starts? If it were a pen and paper homework, it would be due at the start of class, so I don’t see why this should be any different.
Luckily, this is a “new” system for this class, my semester is the guinea pig. So if I make some suggestions about the system, and get others to do so as well (since I do know others who have been burned by the midnight dealine) then maybe we can actually change something. Our achool’s slogan is “Why not change the world?”, so we are really just doing what the school wants us to.
Hey, I sympathize. I used to get pissed off when the prof would take up homework at the beginning of the class, and I wouldn’t be able to finish it (or, in some cases, start it) during the lecture.
Was the midnight before class deadline mentioned in the syllabus, or elsewhere in class? If so, you’ll need to read that more carefully next time. (If your school is anything like mine was, they read the damn thing in the first class, so no one really has an excuse.)
Lobbying for a change is probably a good thing, but as long as they make deadlines reasonable (which this one certainly is) and they tell you about them in advance, they don’t owe you anything else.
Because deadlines are not designed to be convenient. If the deadline is midnight, then you get off your lazy ass and do the assignment before midnight. I had plenty of assignments that the prof demanded emailed before midnight when I was in school. Know what I did? I emailed the assignment in before midnight.
bouv–I apologize for making you the target of this, but it’s one of my pet peeves. I see it around here regularly, so please don’t feel like I’m singling you out. But–why do you use “retarded” as an insult? You are aware, of course, that there are people out there, and even right here on the boards, who are parents to retarded children, right? Can you see why using the condition that afflicts their much-loved child (or sibling or friend or whatever) as a scathing put-down might be insensitive at best and completely fucking disgusting at worst? Maybe I’m the only one that this bothers, but frankly, whenever I hear someone use “retarded” as an insult I feel like I’m back in the second grade.
You sound like a fairly intelligent person, homework troubles and all, and thankfully English is a vast and varied language. May I humbly suggest that you find a new word?
Well, let’s see - retarded. From the verb retard - to delay, inhibit or impede. Like while tuning a car you can advance it or retard it. Or how the progress of society is retarded by people who are overly sensitive. It’s a perfectly valid word. Just because it may have negative connotations for some doesn’t really mean it needs to be stricken from the vocabulary of all. I mean, “my cousin died in a boating accident, everyone should stop saying ‘still water runs deep’ because water makes me think of death and the inhumanity of existence”. Doesn’t hold much water, does it? I can’t stop with the puns, or the undersensitivity. Well, whatever.
Yeah, the nerve of my college. Who do they think they are, telling me how to get an education?
Come on. You are completely free to do your homework whenever you please. That is your right. Similarly, your professors are free to not give you credit for it if you turn it in after it’s due. They’re free to penalize you for ignoring their rules. That’s their right.
As the student, it is your responsiblity to understand when homework is due. It is also your responsibility to get homework done in a timely manner. It sounds like you did neither. Yeah, I know, everyone does that ‘waiting until the last minute to do homework’ thing. I did it, too. But when you do so and miss your deadline and get a big fat zero, it’s your own damn fault.
Heh. Sorry you don’t seem to be getting any sympathy. Think of it this way: you get to do your homework in the comfort of your own home/dorm/alley, and get some sleep besides. I had one class where the programming assignments were due handed in on disk at 9am Monday. Guess how many people got any sleep Sunday night? We appreciated the midnight e-mailed work much more after that.
Sorry, no sympathy from me either. (And I am sorry about that, I usually like to bitch about school issues)
You knew the rules, turn in your homework on time or get a zero. “On time” defined as midnight. The system itself gives you chances to fix stuff you do wrong, how much easier do you want homework to be?
If you like doing it at 1 am, do it 23 hours before its due.
You know, bouv, most professors would in such a case be willing to accept a late assignment. Some wouldn’t, but this isn’t a case where most would care if it was handed in at 12 or 1.
Yeah, but I have a feeling that the origin of the term as used in the OP comes from mental retardation. “That’s retarded”=“That is the sort of action that would be performed by a mentally retarded person”=That isn’t an intelligent action.
Well, first off, it is actually not mentioned in the syllabus that assignments are due at midnight the night before class, it merely says that assignments are “live” for a certain amount of time. I also don’t remember the prof saying that in class. He might have, since I always wind up being forced to sit in the back and can’t hear him. But the only reason I remember that it was due at midnight is I remembered seeing it on the previous assignment, as a side not when I loaded it up.
Add to the fact that I have had to do online homework at RPI before, for both of my physics class. Both of those times, a differrent system was used (yet another strike against the school, no standardization) and it was always due an hour before class. So I was used to having something similar to that.
It just irks me that for every semester this class has been offered, homework was pen and paper, due at the start of class. Now, suddenly, it’s online, and due twelve hours before class. If before they had implemented this system, homework was due the day before, then I wouldn’t have as big a problem with it, but it’s like a double standard.
“Oh, well, if they write it themselves it’s like 90% of their homeowrk here, they can hand it in at class. But if they do it online? Well, in that case make it due at midnight.”
I just wish I knew the reasoning behind it. Maybe the reasoning is because we get to do it as many times as we want. OK, then tell me that, don’t leave me guessing and coming to the conclusion that you just didn’t bother to think about it and set an arbitrary deadline.
Oh, and belladonna, I do apologize for using the term ‘retarted.’ While I certaintly didn’t equate my school to a mentally challenged person in my head, it was still as bad term to use. From now on, I’ll try to remember to use the term ‘moronic,’ hopefully no one has a problem with that.
