Your extra work should make up for my lack of attention

If I need to redo my work in order to properly convey that I have learned the necessary material, fine I’ll do it. If my submitted work was not complete enough, deep enough, or in some way incorrect, no problem, I’ll redo it. The point is that I’m here to get an education. I’m paying a gazillion dollars for a good one. And if I have to redo every single assignment in order to actually learn – I’m ok with that.

However, if you call me up to discuss the homework I need to redo, and while you’re going over what I did wrong you stop and say “oh, I guess I didn’t read this”…I’m not going to be very happy over redoing the work.

Prof – can you come up here a minute? I need to talk to you about this assignment.

Me – Sure.

Prof – You remember how I asked for… (describes paper requirements)

Me – Yep

Prof – Well (turning pages through my submitted paper), I need you to redo it and be more specific and detailed about … Oh, (stops and spends a few minutes reading the page) I guess I didn’t read this. Well, yeah. That’s right, that’s right…OK, so I didn’t read all this so I didn’t see what you had done here, but I want you to rewrite it and go ahead and put a little more in there.

Me – (verbally) OK, thanks. (nonverbally) Oh. My. Word. Did you seriously just say that? You were apparently going to give me a grade without reading all of the work, decided to give me a second chance to rewrite the second page that you hadn’t read because it didn’t look like the first page was leading in the right direction, and now that you have read it I have to redo it anyway?

**walking away trying to decide whether to make my redone homework superbly simplistic or excruciatingly academic**

Might I suggest a Coca-Cola instead?

One controversial change in the sixth edition of the APA style manual is the switch to requiring two spaces at the end of a sentence instead of just one. According to theAPA's style blog, "...this new recommendation will help ease their reading by breaking up the text into manageable, more easily recognizable chunks...APA thinks the added space makes sense for draft manuscripts in light of those manuscript readers who might benefit from a brief but refreshing pause."

Corrections to the new APA Publication Manual

Seriously? Two spaces? This is insanity. With fonts that auto-adjust character width it's just illogical. Maybe if everyone were still whacking out their papers on a typewriter. Or if it were acceptable to submit papers in Courier New. But it's not, so this is a fairly stupid (imo) addition to the "rules". Most APA guidelines have some grain of intelligence behind them - not all, but most. This one not so much.

So, do you find that paragraph up there more "refreshing" to read than this one? Are there amazing differences in the amount of eyestrain you are experiencing? I know that it drives word processors crazy (online or in a document) to put in extra spaces. I think I'm not going to mention the addition of spaces to my professors just yet. It's not in the manual they gave us so technically I don't have to follow it.

Matthew Morrison

found a reason

Why march?

"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional as to how they perceive the Veterans of Earlier Wars were Treated and Appreciated by their Nation."

--George Washington--

The speech, 'Why Are You Marching Son' was written by John Mitchum and spoken by John Wayne.