Oh, and re: grade changes -- one of my students last year (who would have been one of my absolute favorites if I didn't love all my students exactly the same amount) visibly worked up her courage (with the help of her therapist, who ACCOMPANIED her on this visit) to ask me about her grade. It turned out that I'd mixed up her grade with the person next on the class list (don't get me started on manual bubble-sheet grading) and she really had earned a B- instead of a D. So there are definitely times to ask, and I not only changed her grade but wrote a glowing letter to her chosen high school explaining my mistake and what a great student she is.

Well, asking for an extension is sort of part of the rules. I used to ask for extensions all the time in my English classes because I knew I would have a lot of work in my theatre classes. I almost always asked at the beginning of the semester because I would look at my semester calendar to figure out when I could work on things. I also worked full time, went to school full time and did college AND outside theatre for my sophomore and junior years of college, so this was about the only way I could get through without killing myself. The theatre teachers, however, did not believe in extensions or any excuse for not working. Theatre work ethic is, like, crazy-- there is sort of no point when you can stop working if it needs to be done! I actually have had a hard time getting rid of it in my office life. I am, however, really terrible at time management now-- I think I used it all up in my college years and just after.

I discovered the huge advantage of a small liberal arts college is that you have full professors teaching you (not grad students) and they have lots of office hours and you'd be foolish not to take advantage of picking their brains. That's why their brains were there.

Me, too. I wasn't good at negotiating new grades, because I tend to cry under stress, and if I was doing poorly enough in the class to not be getting a good grade odds were good that I'd be stressed and therefore weepy. (I almost failed Stagecraft because my visual arts skillz suck, and we had to make set models, and mine were... not good. The accompanying descriptions were good, but he was grading on the actual models. I had to negotiate, because failing Stagecraft would have meant not getting my theater major.) However, I had absolutely no problem engaging the profs in discussion at any appropriate time (office hours, lunch).

I never saw extensions and grade changes as the same thing.

Of course, I asked for the former all the time and the latter never.

And with one exception I always got my extensions.

Yeah, I never asked for a grade change but extensions? Of course! It was up to the professor to be firm and allow or disallow the extension. I think I did ask to take a test over once that I'd taken on the night I got back after my grandfather's funeral and did very poorly on in a class I was otherwise doing fine in. The professor let me do that. If I'm remembering correctly.

Heh. I'm too rule abiding. Usually my profs had some kind of "turn the paper in late and it's half a grade a day" or somesuch..and I'd be like "Well, do I think I can write THAT much better a paper by tomorrow, is it worth the grade hit?". But those weren't classes in my major or anything. (And, heck, it's not like I was ever earning less than a B in anything that wasn't Chemistry...unfortunately, chem WAS my major...)

I asked for one extension and didn't get all the time the professor promised. I still ended up with a decent grade, but I was a little peeved that he reneged on the deal. Otherwise, I pretty much accepted that whatever grade I got was what I deserved under that professor's grading criteria. The problem was not always figuring out what intangibles a particular professor may be watching for that factor into the overall grade. Those folks, I usually did poorer than I expected.

I am Kristin WRT students who want to renegotiate their writing grade and/or bargain for extra credit, grade based on effort not output, etc.

The only time I ever went to a prof to ask for a grade change was the quarter I had a really bad respiratory flu. I managed to catch up with the work in the class, Calculus as I recall, and then get docked a letter grade due to numerous absences. I went to him, and said, "Look, you know I was in fact sick, you hated it on the days I did actually show up because of all the coughing, and the day I told you I was going for a chest ex-ray to rule out pneumonia, you said you hope it is, so they can actually treat it." He gave me a ridiculous amount of Calculus! Story Problems! and said if I completed them, he would let me have my C.

Never did finish 'em.

See, now WindSparrow's story is silliness. I understand requiring attendance because you don't want kids to flunk ad then be all "but I didn't GET it!". And when it's French or English and you want discussion (many of my classes like that had a lecture session and a discussion section, and it was really annoying when no one showed up for discussion. Though I slept through French discussion waaaay too many times). And so that you CAN pull out the "but you skipped every class!" thing. But not the kind of thing to enforce if you don't need to. Yeesh.

I won't give an extension without a good reason -- and I won't give one if the student waits until the last minute if s/he knew there would be some kind of conflict. (e.g. a student once asked me the Mon the paper was due because the weekend before she'd attended her sister's wedding. Answer was no, but had she told me earlier [it was on the syllabus from the 1st day of class] I might have cut her a break).

These are law students who are going to face time limits in practice that are not flexible, so I've never felt like it was unreasonable for me to hold the line on due dates.