Now what?

My students have a MAJOR paper due tomorrow. I had posted that if classes were cancelled, they could e-mail the paper to me and I'd count it as on-time.

But we have icy conditions here. (I went home at noon when my last class finished; I had research work I could do just as well safe at home - and maybe even better because I won't be compulsively checking weather.com or looking out the window and I can fix myself cups of tea).

One of my students called me all in a swivet.

He is not done with his paper and they have just closed the library. He also doesn't have e-mail at home, so there is no way he can e-mail it to me.

He was quite angry about it - "What are you going to do about this?" he demanded.

Look, dude. I didn't make the weather. And give me 30 seconds to absorb the situation before demanding I make it all better.

I capitulated and told him I'd accept papers Monday (I know for sure he and one other student will be late. And they will take any opportunity to be late. I know I'm not gettin' the paper tomorrow even if the sun comes out and it goes up to 50 degrees out there in the next hour.) This makes me angry as I will have to spend the week I would have been writing final exams grading student papers. I told him if I took the papers in Monday, they could not expect them back before the final. (I also have people who get upset about things like that - they come and knock on my door an hour after an exam to know if I have theirs graded.)

I feel kind of weak about this now. I mean, criminy - the assignment has been in existence and in the consciousness of the students since 1 September. He could have - even if he didn't have all the data - looked up the background information he needed and started writing it. (He called me yesterday afternoon wailing that he couldn't find any articles on his topic. As I spoke to him, I tried a few search terms in the campus article-searcher and turned up at least 7 that would work well).

I'm really unhappy about it - this is the "diNozzo" guy I wrote about earlier, the one who seems to slide through on a combination of charm and demandingness.

I had my weekend carefully scheduled to get the papers graded. So if I take them in on Monday, I'm stuck with my thumb up my butt for two days and I will be pressed for time later on (I SUPPOSE I could write most of the final exams, just leaving off the last week's material, but....I had plans. Plans to grade papers. Yeah, I know. I'm just like Raymond Babbitt in that way. But I think I'm allowed to have one or two personality quirks and my need to have settled plans is one of them.)

But I feel like if I gave this guy a free extension, I should give one to everyone else in the class - especially people who actually, you know, planned in advance.

I can't take points off for lateness because he has essentially bullied me into saying I wouldn't do it to him.

I also don't want to require everyone else - including people who probably have long drives - to absolutely hand their papers in tomorrow. But I don't know. I don't know what's fair in this case. (What isn't fair? Calling your teacher all angry because you procrastinated and now the bad weather is preventing you from doing the thing at the last minute and then demanding that your teacher fix it. Trust me, dude, if I were God, you'd probably have MORE problems than bad weather right now...)

It's hard to be fair sometimes. I like to be fair. I don't like dealing with people who are angry because "Joe called you and you told him he could turn his paper in Monday, so I'm doing that too!" (Gah. I should have told him not to tell everyone else that I told him that. Now he might pass it around and I really will be stuck with my thumb up my butt all weekend.)