Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

In my programming class, I have one student who I also taught in Physics lab last term. He was the one who, after the course cards had been given out, approached me about getting a higher grade so that he could make it to the Dean’s List.

This is a bad habit that students have, thinking that teachers can arbitrarily change grades without consequences to the rest of the class. Usually it’s either those who want to get on the Dean’s List or those who want to erase a former failure from their accumulation by getting at least at 2.5. What’s surprisingly uncommon are those who want to pass instead of fail because their accumulation would get them kicked out.

The reason why I don’t give in to these requests is because it shows a lack of foresight on the students’ part. If it was really a goal they had planned to achieve, their efforts would show from the start of the term. This is especially true for those who already have accumulated failures, because only a severe turnabout of their study habits would secure their continued enrollment. Continuing along the old track would yield predictable results.

For those who ask for a higher grade, it seems more like an afterthought. They were not primarily aiming for the Dean’s List or for erasing their accumulation, but a difference of point five in grade from that minimum and they think a little begging would make the teacher give in to letting them have a grade that does not reflect the quality of their work.

This is why on the last week of classes I always show the students their pre-final standings. It is supposed to give them a realistic expectation of their rating after the final exam. It also minimizes students questioning why their grades are so low, because all I have to show them is the results of their finals, in which they more or less have an idea how well they did depending on the certainty of their answers.

Anyway, to revert from my digression, this same student I was talking about earlier has now twice given me a new diskette containing his submission for the hands-on exercise yesterday. Once was yesterday afternoon (which I accepted because he could not save to his own disk in the lab, and had to save on a classmate’s disk).

This morning he tried to submit another disk, one more revision of the program he made the day before. I did not accept it, as I said it would be unfair to the rest of the class, who then I would have to allow to correct the original work they passed. I just lied and said I had already checked and graded all their disks. Even his classmates jeered him about showing his obsessiveness to a teacher again.