You file into the classroom with your peers, finding your seat. The professor waits in silence behind the podium and, just as class begins, makes a dreaded announcement: “I hope you all brought your homework with you. You can bring it up to my desk.”
You groan internally because, of course, you didn’t. Either you forgot, or maybe you didn’t even know an assignment was due in the first place.
Dedicated students hope to have moments like this only a handful of times before they graduate, but that’s not always the most straightforward wish. Our social lives, hobbies, jobs and even extracurricular activities are constantly at odds with the time we have to spend on schoolwork. Sometimes, a homework assignment simply slips our minds.
Something that can make this lapse of responsibility easier to avoid, however, is a course calendar.
Most professors on campus already provide a schedule for class assignments throughout the semester. It is, after all, common sense to do so. How can professors expect their students to fulfill their academic obligations without providing a clear outline of what and when those obligations are?
Unfortunately, providing this basic courtesy to students is not a universal act among our professors. LSU’s Faculty Handbook specifies that “[w]ritten course syllabi must be distributed to students in all courses, graduate as well as undergraduate,” but no requirement exists for any kind of tentative calendar or schedule for assignment due dates.
In my time at the university, at least four of my classes have lacked any system for communicating the deadlines of course content outside of contacting the professor directly. Moodle helps with this by displaying a due date when the coursework in question is online. Still, in cases of paper assignments, minor quizzes and other offline tasks, students without calendars are frequently left high and dry.
This is a genuinely senseless issue for the university to have. When the vast majority of professors already see the logic behind providing these calendars, the administration should examine whether allowing their absence is reasonable or even fair.
Every Tiger draws metaphorical straws during class scheduling as to whether their professors will streamline the experience or force students to send out emails to confirm the dates of quizzes and assignments. Draw the wrong straw, and you may find your semester needlessly more hectic and stressful than it is for the rest of your peers.
These calendars don’t need to be set in stone by the time the semester begins. Instructors that already provide schedules frequently update them when inclement weather or other unforeseen circumstances interfere with academic life.
The timelines don’t even need to be in-depth. A simple list of tentative dates for homework, quizzes, tests and other assignments would bring successful performance within closer reach of every Tiger.
Besides, is this really that demanding of a request to make? If professors are truly prepared for the courses they teach, listing out the tentative dates for each assignment would not take longer than a measly hour or two. If circumstances change or they need to shift some dates around halfway through the semester, they can do so and send out a quick email to inform students of the update.
Requiring these course calendars would not only alleviate unnecessary stress on students, but it would hold professors accountable for being ready and prepared to fulfill their duties as instructors.
What other reasons do we need?
Noah McKinney is an English and history junior from Houston, TX.
