It's the review session. I'm doing this with the "Lazy Professor" pedagogical pattern and letting them think up possible questions - and answers - in groups. I just walk around looking intelligent. There's one guy I don't recognize, so I go ask him who he is.- "I'm Matty" he chimes up.
- Hi, Matty, why are you here?
- To review for the exam.
- But you won't be taking the exam, will you? I've never seen an exercise or lecture note from you this semester.
- Oh, I registered late. They screwed up my application.
- Oh right, you were the guy who begged to get admitted to my already filled class and then never showed up! Well, you didn't do the exercises, and they are prerequisites for the exam.
- No, I haven't, when can I hand them in?
- Hmm, let me think. This past Sunday was the last possible submission date. I don't take late work. You do know that the lecture notes are 20% of the grade? I don't think you submitted any.
- Where did it say that?
- In the syllabus, Matty, the one posted on the web site.
I have him come up and review his work. Moodle is great (although they are trying to have this function turned off on account of privacy and all). Matty has logged into the system a total of 6 times this semester. His last visit was 21 days ago. I review the syllabus - you must submit 8 exercises to be admitted to the exam. I say that I will take the exercises that he could not submit because of the late admittance, and then the rest up to 8 so that he can take the exam, but the exercises won't count towards his grade, they will be zeros because they are late.
"Um, " Matty looks for words. "I haven't actually started the exercises yet. But I purchased the textbook!"
Holy Mother of Snowflakes! Do they believe that knowledge is absorbed by osmosis? Or has Prentice-Hall started packaging litte white knowledge pills inside the shrink-wrap?
Go look up "student" in a dictionary, Matty. Okay, you can use the Wikipedia for this exercise, too.
derived through Middle English from the Latin second-type conjugation verb "studēre", meaning "to direct one's zeal at"
Now go look up "zeal," Matty. And bring me a drink while you are at it. Make it a double.
