Monday, April 28, 2008

uh-oh.

Okay, so it is the last week of classes here. The week when everyone has papers due.

I had one due today, I collect another one on Friday.

One of my "A" students from the class today comes in, very apologetic, and says, "My printer at home is broken and I thought I'd be able to print up here in the computer lab. But the printer there is broken; there are a couple of guys from Computer Services beating on it right now."

I was able to print his paper for him from my office computer, but that doesn't bode well. The class is a class of 15 people, and I have 10 papers. I really need to get these graded today.

The worst thing - if they don't adequately fix the printer - is that I have a big-giant-stress-filled (as in it's worth as much as an exam) paper to collect for ecology on Friday. And I really really really do not want folks going "I couldn't print it! Can I give it to you Monday?"

Because Monday is exam week, and that really would not work.

I swear that printers in academic settings are built to sense the end of the semester and break at precisely that time; I've seen it happen to the printer my colleagues and I share on this floor - it goes down right when it is time for us to print our exams. And while most of us have printers at home (and I have even run home to print stuff for people who either lived far away or didn't have a printer), it's still an inconvenience.

And while I sympathize with the students, I think I am going to warn my ecology students today that the printer in the lab is acting up and that they better have a better plan for getting their paper to me than "I will print it at 11:59 am on Friday" (the "hard" deadline for the papers is noon and I've basically told them, "Don't even BOTHER if you're giving it to me after that.)

I know people have lots of stuff going on but they have had like a month to write this - and they've known it was coming all semester. It makes it very hard on me to have that kind of grading bleed over into exam week.

4 comments:

Kate P said...

Ugh. My condolences. Hope your students got their acts together.

red fish said...

I let my students email me papers if they want to. Would that work for you when the printers are not working?

Mr. Bingley said...

My Bride is hearing all of that from her students. And as Dept Chair she gets to hear it from everyone else' students too!

Ain't life grand?

Mr. Bingley said...

oops, "else's" me means.

meant

dang fingers.