[Fire-Babe]

So I decided to be nice and e-mail a couple of students about the paper they didn't turn in. Because I'm looking at 6 months ahead with NO students, I'm feeling charitable. So I say "Hey, maybe I misplaced it, but I didn't get your final reflection paper." One was a really good student, so I'm pretty sure I deleted it instead of downloading it for grading. The others....not so much, but since I sent one, I should send all.

One of the others answers thusly:

"I thought I sent that in, but I should have it. What does it consist of again? "

Nice try....I was born at night, but not LAST night. (Actually in the afternoon, but I digress.) I was tempted to send him the assignment but I decide to not make it easy for him. So I respond:

"It's on the last page of the handout for the assignment." (It was a big, semester-long group project thing).

His response is that he will send it to me as soon as he gets home from work. Or as soon as he looks through his stuff, calls a friend or two from class, maybe checks on Blackboard (although it's not up there, I forgot to upload it...and I'm not inclined to do it now), and writes something really quickly that he hopes might actually be in the ballpark of what I'm talking about.

[Fire-Babe]

Latest response: " I was wondering if you could send me the prompt because I believe I didn't save my paper after i sent it to you, so I can email it to you tonight. Thanks "

Riiiiiight.

[L!zz~]

I was diligent about papers. Sure, I, at times, handed them in just under the wire. But to totally not do it? I don't get it.

So, what was the topic?

[L!zz~]

And why wouldn't you save your paper!

[Fire-Babe]

Can't save a paper you didn't actually write yet. If he had come clean and said "oh my gosh I forgot" or something else, I would have given him the information on what was to be included.

It is about the easiest paper in the world. Summarize the group project, tell me what your role was (what you did), what did you do well, what do you need to do better.

It's a really good check on who did what. The people who actually participated in the project can give a lot of detail. The people who did not say things like "I looked stuff up."

He ended up kinda getting it. He summarized the project, but left out the 'what he did' (b/c he didn't do anything on it, his group members had already told me that).