Question for parents, from a professor

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I despise profs who are sticklers for student deadlines. It’s cruel and completely unnecessary.

You know who misses all the deadlines at work and who never gets fired? Tenured profs.

BS. What deadlines do we miss? We have grant deadlines, publication deadlines, reporting deadlines, grade submission deadlines, and on and on. Trust me, we're not imposing anything on students that we don't have to deal with ourselves.

Anything related to teaching? Showing up to class on time, grading assignments, providing assignments….

DP. Such hypocrisy. Publishing a book or article is a part of the "real world." You are getting paid for it and you have deadlines.

[Anonymous]

I take the approach that I want them to learn the material I am teaching, not life lessons. I am fairly lenient with deadlines. Have too many students who are always just on the edge. They pay for their own classes, they work. Many have families. Yes I teach community college. I also have a ton of 18-year-olds who are planning to transfer to a 4-year so I get a mix.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a parent of a kid with learning differences, I think it’s about learning more than strictness. But it is also about accountability and building up to that. So just like the workplace somewhere along the continuum probably makes sense. The workplace does not have super strict deadlines for the most part.

Why would a learning difference impact your ability to follow a schedule? Do you think a boss will cut you slack on deadlines? Nope.

Because some kids with learning differences take longer to process assignments, organize their thoughts and get work done. If it takes you twice as long to do something and that applies to every assignment in every class, things can sometimes fall between the cracks. The difference between college and jobs is that college is about learning and skill building. A totally capable kid who can do stellar work should not be relegated to easier community college work because University professors impose strict deadlines. These students will generally have choices in the type of job they take. I work in a highly technical field and always get excellent reviews. I take longer to complete assignments, so I chose a job that didn't have high pressure deadlines. I think most fields have that type of flexibility. The caliber of the work I get and do is comparable to other jobs in my field, I just don't have the same time pressures so my boss doesn't need to cut me slack.

[Anonymous]

Also, college is not a job. Different standards and expectations. It's okay to give some slack. You don't have to be a hard ass while trying to TEACH content.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think sliding scale point deductions (5% for one day late, 10% for two, 20% for 3, etc) are both fair and most like the real world. If I give my boss something a day late but it’s good, he only knocks off a little.

+1.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’d rather students learn what the real world will be like. In many industries, punctuality is extremely important. On the job is not when you want to learn what punctuality is. If you’ve been allowed to turn work in whenever without penalties, you won’t do well in the real world.

Who says it has to be whenever without penalty?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I despise profs who are sticklers for student deadlines. It’s cruel and completely unnecessary.

You know who misses all the deadlines at work and who never gets fired? Tenured profs.

BS. What deadlines do we miss? We have grant deadlines, publication deadlines, reporting deadlines, grade submission deadlines, and on and on. Trust me, we're not imposing anything on students that we don't have to deal with ourselves.

Anything related to teaching? Showing up to class on time, grading assignments, providing assignments….

DP. Such hypocrisy. Publishing a book or article is a part of the "real world." You are getting paid for it and you have deadlines.

Why no, profs don’t get paid for publishing articles (or doing peer review) and you typically initiate the publication process when you have the article already written. Deadlines only kick in if accepted and then they’re for relatively minor revisions.

I’ve never seen profs who don’t show up on time to class. The only assignments-based deadlines externally imposed involve submission of final grades to the Registrar (and profs meet those). Grading assignments takes as long as it takes (can’t always anticipate how long that will be — it’s a function of how many/what kinds of mistakes students made, how much help you have from TAs, how much time TAs have (they’re taking classes too)). When/how many assignments to provide is up to the prof (and subject to change). Main reason for change (which is relatively rare) is students need more time.

There are lots of deadlines in academia (letters of rec, grant apps, conference proposals, tenure files), but many posters here seem to have a variety of misunderstandings re how the job works. And it’s all “the real world,” which includes lots of different kinds of jobs and levels (and types) of supervision and of time pressure.

[Anonymous]

Any job with tenure is not ‘the real world’

[Anonymous]

My son is finishing up his sophomore year. This year, he seemed to have a better relationship with his professors because he was a better communicator. He asked more questions when something was unclear. He keep open dialogue via email to get clarifications on instructions for assignments. And when he needed an extension, he asked for it (in advance), and I believe he was given them for the most part. I think as long as a student doesn't abuse it and is a clear communicator, this mimics the real world more so than the strict, no exceptions deadlines. But the way, this is in a top 20 university.

[Anonymous]

Most academic teaching jobs don’t involve tenure and tenure isn’t what you think it is.

Partnership at Big Law is closely equivalent to tenure — is that not the real world? K-12 teachers often have a form of tenure after a probationary period — don’t they work in the real world? Unionized workers and civil servants have various protections based on seniority and designed to prevent them from being fired for the wrong reasons. Do they work in the real world?

I think by “real world” you mean some (largely fictional) model of how capitalism works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP I have 2 college age kids. One goes to a State school majoring in finance. Deadlines are strict. The other goes to a SLAC. Deadlines are whenever. The whenever deadlines cause a LOT of stress. DC keeps working and working and working and never gets a break. It’s also not the real world. So I don’t think you are doing any favors with whenever deadlines. It’s the worst thing about DCs SLAC. Which is a top 10.

Except the SLAC's approach is actually really similar to how many industries work, and is a major reason a lot of people struggle to acclimate to a work environment after being in a very rigid, rule-based education setting.

I worked in law and consulting for 25 years. Yes, sometimes there are hard deadlines. They are great, I love them -- nothing motivates like simply having to complete something by a set date or risk losing a client or a project or a bonus or whatever.

But 90% of the time, my projects operate on a rolling basis with no firm deadline. It's like "as soon as you can get to this" or "let's try to finish this before the quarter ends" but if something more urgent comes up, things get pushed all the time. Everyone is juggling multiple projects at the same time of varying levels of importance.

You have to learn how to prioritize, how to set deadlines for yourself and stick to them (I'm going to finish the outline on this by Friday so that I can send it around for comments). The people who are most successful are the people who can self-motivate and organize themselves in a way that gets work done even though often projects just disappear off everyone else's radar until suddenly one day you get an email that says "Oh hey, is this done?" And if you've been ignoring it in favor of items with clear deadlines, you are screwed. I've had subordinates who expect everything to be laid out for them with clear deadlines, and for me to say "this is what you should work on first, and this is how, and then do this" etc. They don't last. That's not my job -- they have to learn to prioritize and figure it out on their own. It's about maturity and self-sufficiency.

So while I understand that hard deadlines are easier and lack of them is stressful, this is really just the reality of many white collar jobs, and both of your kids should be learning how to deal with the kind of nebulous deadline culture because it's not going away anytime soon.

PP here: where I worked law firm, top consulting company, college prof, they really expected you to meet deadlines. Yes in law sometimes there are extensions but often we were meeting hard end of quarter or govt deadlines. You could extend but that just made it worse. The university also has some very strict rules about deadlines and passing. All different for Covid but Covid is (hopefully) ending.

[Anonymous]

People who have big learning disabilities are going to have some significant problems in top firms unless you some kind of genius.

[Anonymous]

Try reading a book about working the line in a top restaurant. They are not kidding about deadlines.

[Anonymous]

Why/how is a “top restaurant” more real than a university? Same world, different industries, different jobs, different skills. I’m guessing most people don’t send their kids to a university so they can learn to be line cooks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was teaching at colleges a long time ago, and made my share of mistakes. One mistake was being too strict and gave too difficult homework. Now I realized the strictness is not necessary at all.

But I know many professors love being strict and give hard exam that the average score is barely passing, so that they can bump the scores up using a hypothetical normal curve. To me it is very manipulating.

I was an adjunct briefly, and I was too strict at first. I learned later to let things go and focus on teaching and trying to excite the kids about what they were learning.

I took a class recently at our local CC. The professor had very strict deadlines, and he took 10% off the grade if the assignment was late. But he was very lenient if you talked with him. I had to ask for extra time, and he always gave it to me, no matter how flimsy my excuse. At one point, he said, "I'm on your side," to whole the class, which I thought was great. I wish I said that to every class I'd ever taught. Because it's true. Teaching is so much more fun when the kids are engaged, and intimidating them doesn't engage them.

To answer OP, my HS kid is miserable with all the busy work and constant deadlines, so I'm hoping that when my kid gets to college, there will be more flexibility and more emphasis on learning and communication with the professor, instead of meeting deadlines.

When I went to college, I'd be assigned a paper on the first day of class, and there'd be no further mention of it until the day it was due. It seemed crazy and pointless. All my professors were busy doing research and fighting for tenure, so I guess they didn't want to bother teaching us sad little undergraduates. It made for a miserable time for me in college (and this was at an Ivy).

I suppose there's some judgement involved here, and that requires getting to know your students. Some kids will do really well if they have a strict deadline, and others will fall apart. If you have 100 kids in the class, that's tough to do, but with 15, you can get to know them a little and try to figure out how best to deal with them. Some get very anxious over deadlines, others not so much. My DD writes papers and turns them in ahead of time. She's super organized and has no anxiety whatsoever about writing a paper. One of her siblings has huge anxiety about writing papers, and puts everything off until the very last minute, then writes it all in a rush. They both get good grades, but they're different kids. I suggest flexibility, OP, as much as possible. I don't think super strict deadlines are helpful, but everyone needs to learn how to meet deadlines, so they are useful too.