Fiddling with dates on syllabi--what could be a more boring way to spend the day? Click, copy, paste, shift everything to move an assignment over here and then change my mind and move it back again: it all feels pretty futile.
And yet imagine the power. With one click of the mouse, I can make my students' weekends miserable or open up broad expanses of free time. I can cram a bunch of demanding assignments into a short span of time or stretch them out more evenly, front-load the semester with reading and writing tasks or inundate my students in November.
No matter how I adjust the syllabus, one thing is certain: students will find something to complain about--and so will I. At some point in every semester I find myself wondering what possessed me to put so many pages of reading in the same week and what made me think I could read that many student drafts on the same day.
But I think I've fixed it this time. I think this semester's syllabi are just about perfect, thanks to days and days of fiddling with dates and deadlines.
Of course I say that every semester. How long will it take for the inevitable flaws reveal themselves?
No comments:
Post a Comment