Sunday Scribblings: Enforcing Academic Due Dates

I teach writing and literature at the community college here in Eugene, OR. I've been at Lane Community College since 1989 and before hiring on at LCC had taught at Whitworth College (now University) and the University of Oregon since 1977.

For years, I taught my course as if it were the only course my students were taking and tried to rigorously enforce paper due dates accordingly. I spent a lot of energy cajoling students, sometimes even punishing them with lower grades, all in the name of getting papers in on a certain date.

Other instructors do this, too. They say it helps prepare students for the demands and rigors of the real world.

The IRS extends my tax deadline. When our department needs more time to submit a proposal, almost every time, when we ask, we are given more time. The U.S. Congress extends its sessions beyond what was originally planned. Due dates, time tables, deadlines are, in the real world, negotiable and often have extensions and grace periods built in.

So, is the unbending enforcement of paper due dates really in line with the "real" world? I think not.

Moreover, when I look at my real world professional job, I think it's similar to what many people in different professions experience.

I have one primary "boss" or manager. I teach a schedule of classes and I determine, within objectives shared by our department, what I'll have my students read and when papers should be completed. When conflicts arise in my professional life, when I'm double scheduled with conferences to see students, or when two meetings overlap, I work it out with the parties involved.

This seems to me to be how the "real" world functions, by and large.

Students enrolled full time in college usually take three to four classes.

Therefore, they have three or four "bosses" telling them what to do and when to do it.

Those four "bosses" do not coordinate with each other. At all. I might decided to have an essay due on the same day that a student has a physics midterm.

My experience, in the "real" world is that if this happened to me, I could work out the conflict with the parties involved.

In the academic world, however, instructors often act as if it is a violation of rigor to give a student an extension or to help them work out these kinds of conflicts.

I tell my students to make my class their bottom priority if they need to and to get their work in as soon as is reasonably possible.

I try to work with due dates with my students in the same way I experience them applied in the world of taxes, business, teaching, credit card payments, and other parts of the world we call "real".

I just don't think they need any more pressure than what they are already under working full time or part time, trying to make ends meet, and trying to keep up with a full load of classes with three, four, or five instructors who don't have a clue as to what each other is asking the student to do and when.