Excerpt

ACADEMICS

Believe it or not, instructors spend hours and work hard preparing lectures. They are blanketed with warm fuzziness when you attend classes and stay awake to hear their priceless words. Their cut rule is sacrosanct. If you are fortunate enough not to be in a class of three hundred students, you will find that teachers have definite likes and dislikes. An English Composition instructor tells her class on the first day, In my like column are hands in the air and participation. Sleeping heads and snoring are not in that column. In the dislike column is talking to ones neighbor, slouching and sitting with one eye propped open by an index finger. I urge you to think ahead, and avoid all-nighters.

Regular hours do perk up your body language and endear you to the one responsible for your grade. All teachers are bilingual, reading body language is their second language.

Instructors are particularly egocentric and want all eyes focused on them. When a student (loosely named) rolls in five minutes late, all eyes in the class want to see the offending daredevil. The instructors body temperature notches up a couple of degrees waiting for the offender to get settled. Guess who will be called on next.

And then, not having a dog, a shredder or any other paper-eating machine, the best plan is to hand your essay, paper, lab assignment, etc., in on time. If not, forget the excuse. Each instructor, at any given moment, could quote a hundred of them. Unless you are the excuse genius of the twenty-first century, forget trying.

Lastly, in order to keep your instructor from becoming a howling werewolf, in human form, take the assigned tests at the assigned times. A make-up requires preparation of another, undoubtedly harder, test and insures a low number for you on your teachers popularity poll. A make-up test is a chore, one the instructor ranks lower than cleaning out the kitty box.

All of this points to good organization. A day planner and assignment notebook can help with remembering daily assignments and scheduled tests. Also, find someone in each class to be a note partner with whom you can exchange class notes if absent or happen to miss something. Get his or her e-mail address or phone number.

To sum it up, a good watch, a snooze alarm, a crowing rooster and a note partner are the secrets to the academic high road. Get your body in class and at tests and your assignments in on time. Always remember AOT, academic on time. This is part of consideration and respect for your instructor and a good grade for you.






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