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A comment on My lazy American students. Parent comment

Re:My lazy American students by tolenka on Tuesday December 22, 2009 @09:15PM (#1011334)
Outside of school, deadlines are usually based on project estimates, and as long as you provide sufficient notice, it's often possible to adjust the schedule and dependent activities to fit the actual time required to complete task(s). If it's not possible, then business decisions have to be made regarding what tasks can be abandoned or modified to meet the hard deadlines -- regardless of how the business adapts, you're better off bringing up a scheduling issue before it becomes critical.

Given that deadlines in education are more or less entirely arbitrary, I don't see the harm in extending them within reason, and providing students with the opportunity to successfully complete their tasks.

As for tardiness -- it happens. If someone consistently fails to meet our estimates, but delivers a sufficient degree of value within a reasonable amount of time, then I'll simply learn to incorporate their individual turn-around time in my estimates.

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Re:My lazy American students by yesimahuman on Tuesday December 22, 2009 @10:08PM (#1011414)
I understand that. However, these employees want to get the work done on time, and see it as important, but couldn't get it done in the time estimate. The attitude I notice is more of an indifference to the deadline.
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Re:My lazy American students by tolenka on Tuesday December 22, 2009 @10:28PM (#1011467)
I do understand the indifference -- the deadline is more or less completely arbitrary, as there are very few critical scheduling issues dependent on strictly punctual delivery, and all that is really required is reasonable timeliness. If the professors allow it, why not use the additional latitude to your advantage?

Hard deadlines are generally driven by what are ultimately financial/market concerns. I sweat the deadlines when a trade show is approaching, and I sweat the budget when we see schedule slippage on an release, but most of the time I'm happy as long as everyone is productive, progress is being made, and the budget looks OK.

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