Not So Urban Musings, Part 2-Dead End Deadlines

Concerning assignment deadlines Brooks writes, “In high school and college, teachers stress no-negotiation due dates. If you don’t get your paper or assignment in on time, your grade suffers. While this lesson teaches responsibility, it isn’t as applicable to the working world. Deadlines are important, but for the most part they are also flexible. In the professional world, bosses generally prefer you take more time to create a higher-quality product versus rushing to meet an arbitrary deadline.”  Guess what?  I would prefer my students take more time to create a “quality product” as well. In fact, I was quite amazed at the number of my ENGL 101 students who on this past Monday hadn’t yet started their papers which are due Friday. I was amazed to the point of being practically dumb struck again today-two days later--at how many of them still hadn’t even chosen a general topic. I will not name names. Suffice to say, you know who you are, and so do I, even if I don’t call you out publicly on the fact or confront you about it in class.  I do not understand this. Students say they want to do well.  They comment to their peers that they are afraid of failing, and yet…a scant 48 hours before their draft is due, some have yet to even look over the materials they were supposed to have read to prepare to write the draft.  How do I know this, you ask?  Well, besides my prescient powers, I have the aid of the statistics function on Blogger which tells me that 12, yes 12, yes ONLY 12 people have viewed the sample writing piece (“Urban Musings, part 1”) I directed them to read.  That seems about right. Experience tells me that about 15% of the papers I receive on Friday will really be where they should be. And no, that’s not because of the stellar example I provided.  It’s because those same 12 students have been working solidly all along.  Reading, paying attention and taking notes in class, writing and redrafting. Reading the posted example was just one of the many steps they’ve taken toward crafting a solid paper and meeting the expected deadline.

 Additionally, instructors have their own set of “arbitrary” deadlines we have to meet as well.  Grades come due. Semesters end.  At some point we are all accountable to the constraints we have to work within.  In the ivory tower as well as in the world outside of it.  Instructors rarely set deadlines that are as arbitrary as Brooks would have her readers believe.  All of the instructors I know give a good deal of thought into structuring their classes.  It takes a good deal of consideration and planning when trying to figure out how you are going to set up a schedule that gives your students time to produce quality work yet get through everything you are supposed to in sixteen weeks, creates a manageable work load for them as well as you, and meets deadlines imposed upon us.

 She continues her line of argumentation against deadlines by stating, “It is important to approach every project in a professional and responsible manner and part of that is demonstrating respect for your boss’ timeline. However, if you know that you can produce a better piece with a little extra time, that is something you should bring up.” This seems to contradict what she says earlier about how deadlines in the real world are generally flexible.  This seems to say that if you generally have shown a pattern of acting responsibly in completing work on time, your boss or editor might grant you an extension if you talk to him or her in advance about the difficulty you are having.  I can’t speak for other instructors, but I know that in a similar circumstance in my classroom, I’d try to work with the student as well.  In fact, when we discuss logical fallacies, deadlines are often the example I use to illustrate the slippery slope fallacy.  I ask students how many of them have ever heard a teacher refuse to accept an assignment from a student (none of them of course, but their friends or classmates) because it was late and, the instructor says, if she accepts that student’s work, well then she’ll have to accept late work from everyone.  Hands fly into the air. Nothing more than the old slippery slope logic at work, I tell them.  Most of us who teach writing realize it isn’t an exact science.  We work in a community where we understand what it takes for some of our students to even show up each day is incredible. We know, mainly from our own past experiences, that life often fails to follow the most intricately laid out plans you have for it.  There are always exceptions to the rule, but they should be that.  Exceptions.  And they should be warranted.  I don’t think it’s a matter of instructors being heartless or even unyielding so much as what an instructor feels is a warrant for an extension and what a student feels should be one are sometimes two drastically different things, and like it or not, it’s the instructor who gets to decide if an extension is warranted, not the student.

 However, as Brooks admits, deadlines are there to teach responsibility.  Is teaching responsibility really part of my job?  There certainly are days when I wish I could say no.  I’m just there to teach content.  My job would be so much easier if all I had to do was teach content.  My students’ lives would be so much easier if all they had to worry about was learning content. I know that’s not true though. For either of us.  Brooks oversimplifies the issue, though.  Instructors don’t generally set deadlines for the purpose of teaching students responsibility.  However, students often learn lessons associated with responsibility as a result of them.  In the coming days, some of my ENGL 101 students will be learning those lessons. Some will learn (hopefully) not to put off drafting their papers until the night before because they don’t like the experience of having to sit all night in front of a computer instead of doing something more interesting on a Thursday night, or they don’t like the feeling of panic they experience when trying to locate an open lab to print their papers at the last minute because someone used all the ink in their printer at home. Others will come in ten or fifteen minutes late to class and learn that when I said the beginning of class was when I collected assignments, that’s what I meant and their assignment is late.  A few may wake up suddenly in the wee hours of Saturday morning, startled awake by the realization that they forgot to submit their drafts to turnitin.com. Still more will learn a completely different set of lessons.  They will learn that they could get themselves out of a corner they’d backed themselves into.  They’ll learn that even 48 hours ago they sat in class complaining about how hard the assignment was or how confused they were or (insert an appropriate internal struggle here), they survived.  Better yet, they triumphed. They overcame. Still others will learn the invaluable lesson that they belong here.  Many students already know they do.  Many, though, do not. There are likely to be doubters in both camps at this point in the semester.  That’s how it works.  Writing makes doubters of the best of us—but just as assuredly it makes believers of us as well.  Writing teaches us as much about ourselves as it does the world around us. College is often that way, too, and we learn more than we sign up for.  Ironically, so is the real world which Brooks would have you believe is so foreign to your college experience.

If you still need a little more convincing that deadlines matter in the real world, here are some articles you might want to check out about failing to meet deadlines and the ensuing repercussions:

Four Fired-Ohio Elections Chief Misses Deadline 
350 New Jersey School board Members forced to Resign after Failing to Meet Background Check Deadline 
County Circuit Clerk Ordered to Pay 9.5K to Reimburse Law Firm when She Fails to Meet Filing Deadline