Late Homework

Let's get two things straight:

1. Homework is stoopid.

2. There is no late homework.

I hate having homework for a number of reasons. It's a phenomenal amount of extra work. Take 240 students at 10 problems per week. 1 minute per problem is 40 hours. You spent several hours preparing homework; do you think 10 minutes is enough to evaluate your work? Worse, assigning homework for a grade is such an insult to you. Surely you are, by now, mature enough that if I were to hand out a list of exercises for each topic, you would do them so that you would learn the material, so that you would do well on the exams, so that you would do well in the next course, so that you would do well in life. Right? Right?

I don't want to insult you, but I'm afraid that if I don't assign some small number of points to the homework, many students won't do it and then they will fail. Does it help to assign points? I don't know. There are a number of students who just copy someone else's work to get the points. (Of course it's cheating, but, heck, go for it. There's a certain schadenfreude watching you shoot yourself in the foot in the attempt to lie to me.)

So it's stoopid. I shouldn't have to club you over the head with "points" to get you to educate yourself and you shouldn't have to put up with being clubbed.

So on to the second point: The syllabus says "No late homework." What this means is: There is no late homework. I.e., if you try to hand in your homework after the due date/time, then it will not be accepted. In other words, homework must be handed in on time for any credit. Are we clear yet? Do you see anything in the above that says "unless you have 12 doctors' notes" or "unless grandma dies" or "unless you leave it in your room by mistake?" Me either. There is no concentration of multiple disasters that will convince me that I and the TA and the grader ought to spend a couple hours passing your homework around and having it specially graded. It's not worth it for the fraction of a point that the assignment is worth.

Most of you will find this hard to believe, but there are always a couple non-students in every class that can't do anything right. They are late for class EVERY day and (if I accepted it) they would turn in homework late EVERY time. They make an error on EVERY problem on EVERY exam. (And they expect partial credit, as if someone should earn a C or B having never worked a problem correctly.) And they're always sick or have to work or can't find parking or...or...or....

I sure seems to me that if you can get to class every day at 10:15, then you can get to class every day at 10:00. And if you always have your homework ready by Friday night, then you can always have your homework ready by Friday morning. So I don't understand the problem. Perhaps these non-students are addicted to excuse-making? Yes, things happen, and occasionally everyone screws up. But there's a huge difference between someone who screws up and someone who is a screw up.

If you are not one of them, then it's no big deal if you miss a homework or two. Your grade will never notice. If you are one of them, then welcome to the world of no excuses. It is my sincere wish that my strict homework policy helps you overcome your screwupishness. Now go buy a stapler.

The Calc Ninja