Procrastinating until very last moments to take online exams

[Aster]

I am somewhat puzzled by the fact that we are looking so far for possible explanations.

I didn't intend this thread to get so heavy into the explanatory route, but I appreciate the detailed thoughts and analyses.

Mostly I was just resurrecting a perennial favorite thread topic, for collective sympathy.

[Caracal]

Unfortunately, they are not as skilled as you at determining the minimum effort to pass and often end up on the wrong side of the boundary line. As the instructor, it is frustrating to see such behavior, as the point of my class (from my perspective) is to have them learn a little bit about science, not do the minimum to check a box.

Those things aren't always mutually exclusive. Students might be getting something out of the course, but only doing the minimum required to pass. Obviously, they would be getting more out of it if they worked harder on the assignments, but its not all or nothing.

[ciao_yall]

A senior colleague also discussed this reasoning with me about gender equality and applying for promotions: Women tend to wait until they meet more of the criteria than their male counterparts before applying, which means that each individual woman is more likely to receive the promotion, but on the whole more men will make it, because their confidence in applying earlier means that more men squeak through, offsetting the greater probability that any individual man might not be promoted. (Is that a Simpson's paradox thing? I think it might be.)

Makes sense. Also, men tend to be promoted on their potential, while women tend to be promoted on their tangible accomplishments. I have seen a lot of this in action in the past few months.

[jerseyjay]

I didn't intend this thread to get so heavy into the explanatory route, but I appreciate the detailed thoughts and analyses.

Mostly I was just resurrecting a perennial favorite thread topic, for collective sympathy.

I got that. And I do not think it wrong. However, some of the posts seem to delve very deep into possible reasons while I do not think it that difficult. It is possible that students, for cultural or biochemical reasons, are not that good at delayed gratification we the elders are. However, many of us elders have trouble with planning, too, for various reasons.

The difference that experience and maturation make is that we have a better honed idea of how long we can wait till getting it done, usually through having learnt the hard way how much is too long to wait. As well as learning what are the deadlines that are final and which can be finagled, and also how to get an extension. And finally, we usually learn the importance of triage, i.e., doing the most important stuff first. Of course for some of students, they are doing the important stuff first--it is just that our classes don't fall in this category. 

[marshwiggle]

I made sure never to start any assignment until the day before it was due, or sometimes the afternoon of the same day, to prevent myself spending more time on it that I could otherwise have spent on teaching or research.

I had a prof once who even (probably unintentionally) incentivized this. Assignments were given out a week before they were due, but on the day before they were due, he'd post "hints". So for a mediocre student, it made more sense to ignore the assignment completely until the hints were posted.
(That was one of the many reasons I thought that prof was bizarre.)

[smallcleanrat]

I didn't intend this thread to get so heavy into the explanatory route, but I appreciate the detailed thoughts and analyses.

Mostly I was just resurrecting a perennial favorite thread topic, for collective sympathy.

I got that. And I do not think it wrong. However, some of the posts seem to delve very deep into possible reasons while I do not think it that difficult. It is possible that students, for cultural or biochemical reasons, are not that good at delayed gratification we the elders are. However, many of us elders have trouble with planning, too, for various reasons.
[...]

For me, that part was more of a tangent. It was less about "why do people procrastinate" and more about responding to "there is no biological reason teenagers might have a hard time with mornings."

I saw a one-sentence dismissal of a fairly substantial body of research, and, well...


Caracal, yeah, what surprised me about the prof was not that he waited till morning of to write the questions, but that he didn't seem to care that we TAs were frantically waiting and would end up having to sprint to get the printed copies to the exam room in time. Even so, the students still had to wait a bit because we didn't quite make it.

Like with the prof procrastinating on giving students assignment guidelines, it was the discourtesy that bugged me most.



RE: airports

Is it really that much of a waste of time to get there well before the flight?

I always bring things to do. You can hang out in the terminal with a laptop and get reading and writing done. You can eat.

I am not particularly good at time estimates when it comes to physically getting myself from point A to point B (partly because I get easily distracted). One method I've used to avoid being late to things like classes or appointments is, when feasible, to head to the location with 1+ hour to spare and bring some work with me so I can use the time productively while not worrying about precisely timing the departure from my previous destination.

[marshwiggle]

I am not particularly good at time estimates when it comes to physically getting myself from point A to point B (partly because I get easily distracted). One method I've used to avoid being late to things like classes or appointments is, when feasible, to head to the location with 1+ hour to spare and bring some work with me so I can use the time productively while not worrying about precisely timing the departure from my previous destination.

I don't know if this applies to you, but I've observed that people I know who are often slightly late for things tend to base their time estimates on the best-case-scenario. So, if one time they hit all green lights, had no traffic, and got to work in 10 minutes then "The drive to work takes 10 minutes."   Every time it takes more (even though that is virtually EVERY time), they excuse it by "there was construction" or "there was an accident", etc. It doesn't change their rule about how long it takes.

In other words, because each of those events has a low probability, they don't allow for the fact that the best-case-scenario where NONE of those happen is extremely unlikely.

[mamselle]

RE: airports

Is it really that much of a waste of time to get there well before the flight?

I always bring things to do. You can hang out in the terminal with a laptop and get reading and writing done. You can eat.

I am not particularly good at time estimates when it comes to physically getting myself from point A to point B (partly because I get easily distracted). One method I've used to avoid being late to things like classes or appointments is, when feasible, to head to the location with 1+ hour to spare and bring some work with me so I can use the time productively while not worrying about precisely timing the departure from my previous destination.

I'm with you on this.

Especially after having slept overnight twice at CDG/Paris because of missed flights (the second was not my fault, but the first was, for just the reason you state....I left downtown Paris with only an hour to go on the RER and didn't get into the terminal in time...!!)

Ever since (except for the second time, when they wouldn't let me charge a fare differential I hadn't known of, and the cash machines were down, so I couldn't pay the extra until the next day when they came back up...) I'm early and then some.

I also never book on the last flight out for the day (6 PM to the US, in Paris) and make sure I'm in town for wherever I'm leaving from the night before--the delay in the first case was that I was out-of-town, took the train into Paris in the AM, and just made it to the wrong site for my RER to CDG, so, as our resident Narnian notes, I was thinking "best-case" because I didn't know, having never done it that way before, that there "could be" a problem (even after 15 trips at that point).

But, regarding exams, I have always needed every last second to finish, so no way would I ever underestimate those.

M.

[FishProf]

I don't know if this applies to you, but I've observed that people I know who are often slightly late for things tend to base their time estimates on the best-case-scenario. So, if one time they hit all green lights, had no traffic, and got to work in 10 minutes then "The drive to work takes 10 minutes."   Every time it takes more (even though that is virtually EVERY time), they excuse it by "there was construction" or "there was an accident", etc. It doesn't change their rule about how long it takes.

In other words, because each of those events has a low probability, they don't allow for the fact that the best-case-scenario where NONE of those happen is extremely unlikely.

I see you've met my MIL.

[mamselle]

Or my dad, who tried hard to teach us all that the time to leave to get someplace is when you're supposed to be there....

M.

[ergative]

RE: airports

Is it really that much of a waste of time to get there well before the flight?

I always bring things to do. You can hang out in the terminal with a laptop and get reading and writing done. You can eat.

I mean, that's my view! I lean into it hard--I don't even get reading and writing done, unless it's getting started on my airplane novel or jotting down ideas for Star Trek fanfiction or something. I rather enjoy the hour or so before boarding, when I'm through security, at the gate, everything's on time, and no one can possibly expect me to do anything productive. But then, I'm not an economist who sees everything in terms of marginal utility.

(That's one reason I find the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal so satisfying. The cartoonist has a similar view of economic theory as applied to real life as I do. Exhibit 1. Exhibit 2. All economic cartoons.)

[Caracal]

Caracal, yeah, what surprised me about the prof was not that he waited till morning of to write the questions, but that he didn't seem to care that we TAs were frantically waiting and would end up having to sprint to get the printed copies to the exam room in time. Even so, the students still had to wait a bit because we didn't quite make it.

Like with the prof procrastinating on giving students assignment guidelines, it was the discourtesy that bugged me most.

Yeah, I'm with you. I try to make sure that when I'm procrastinating, it isn't going to effect anyone else. To be honest, I've done similar things with assignment guidelines. However, when I realize I've done something like that, I just push the assignment back. That frustrates some students and I can understand why, but I figure it' better to do that then just give the guidelines late and pretend that was the plan all along.

[smallcleanrat]

RE: airports

Is it really that much of a waste of time to get there well before the flight?

I always bring things to do. You can hang out in the terminal with a laptop and get reading and writing done. You can eat.

I mean, that's my view! I lean into it hard--I don't even get reading and writing done, unless it's getting started on my airplane novel or jotting down ideas for Star Trek fanfiction or something. I rather enjoy the hour or so before boarding, when I'm through security, at the gate, everything's on time, and no one can possibly expect me to do anything productive. But then, I'm not an economist who sees everything in terms of marginal utility.

(That's one reason I find the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal so satisfying. The cartoonist has a similar view of economic theory as applied to real life as I do. Exhibit 1. Exhibit 2. All economic cartoons.)

I suppose one could make an argument that "reading and writing" activities like scrolling through comics and sketching out fanfic ideas can still be considered a "productive" use of time. 'All work and no play' etc...

Humans do have some need for recreation and relaxation. Most people can't stay in tippy-top productivity mode continuously.

I think this is actually a fairly common type of 'best case scenario' planning that can go awry: thinking primarily in terms of time available without accounting for the possibility of fatigue or illness or burnout.

I and practically every classmate I talked to had a term or two (or more) in college in which we bit off much more than we could chew. It was because we had overestimated our stamina and ability to maintain focus all day every day. We learned to better pace ourselves through trial-and-error.

[apl68]

Question: If 20% of the students in my online class think that taking the exam between 11pm - midnight is the optimum time (out of 48 possible hours), are we perhaps doing students a disservice by making them take in-class exams during daytime hours? Is it possible that college students actually perform better closer to midnight? Maybe we should restructure the entire classroom schedule, so that we run from 8pm to 6am instead of 8am to 6pm? This would allow everyone to sleep in!!!

No!  American adolescents perform poorly in the morning in studies for culturally-determined reasons (They're allowed to stay up all night staring at screens, instead of getting a good, consistent night's sleep), not because an inability to function in the morning is an eternal fact of adolescent biology.  Their habits have already been catered to more than enough.  College needs to be a time when they are made to buckle down and start accepting the sort of real-world discipline that they will face in the workplace.  Stuff like this is a part of why employers complain so much about the quality of the recent graduates that they hire.

I got the sense arcturus was joking, but...

This seems like a pretty confident statement. Is it that you've looked at the studies claiming evidence for a biological component and found them faulty? Or is this more of a "oh, come on, everyone knows..."-type conclusion?

My read of the literature is that no one is claiming external factors like screen-time do not contribute, but there are multiple lines of evidence supporting the contribution of internal (biological) factors as well. I started making up a "brief" summary list but it quickly became not-so-brief, especially as I realized it might require explaining many of the different elements of sleep regulation (circadian rhythms vs. homeostatic regulation, sleep depth vs. duration, variations in response to environmental cues, and that's not even touching on the methodology...).

If you're actually interested, I could get more into it, but for now I'll just say this:

The idea that there is an underlying physiological contribution to changes in sleep patterns in adolescents is based on a lot more than a few studies noting that many teens are not functioning at their best first thing in the morning.

For one thing, a shift in the release-time of sleep-promoting molecules like melatonin corresponding with the physiological changes associated with puberty has been documented in monkeys and rodents, as well as humans. If the production of molecules involved in initiating sleep don't begin until later in the night, it is more difficult to get to sleep until later in the night.

This does support an ancient 'fact of biology' if not an "eternal" one. And the monkeys and rats were not allowed to play on smart phones (at least not in the hormone studies I read).



As for external factors, 'coddling' isn't the only explanation for why a teen is staying up late to stare at screens. For example, studying and working on assignments generally requires screen-time nowadays.

Stress and anxiety can also make it difficult to sleep.

And internal and external factors can interact (in a 'vicious cycle' situation). If you can't sleep, you'll be strongly tempted towards reaching for some distraction (like your phone), which might exacerbate your sleep issues. You might use caffeine to get through the day which may also contribute to disrupting your sleep. And with insufficient sleep, it becomes harder to exercise the kind of self-control necessary to resist such temptations, thus making it harder to attain good sleep-related habits.



Anyway, none of that is to say that students ought to be catered to or coddled.

Students need to figure out how to juggle their priorities, manage their time, handle stress, and take care of their health. But if a student seems to be doing these things poorly, there are other explanations beyond 'spoiled, lazy snowflake.'

Aside from the fact that their physiology (including neurophysiology) is still developing, they may be legal adults, but they are novices in this role. It takes time and experience to gain competency in these types of life skills.

IMHO, this is sufficient reason to dial back the sweeping condemnation of 'kids these days.'

Sure, some students are lazy and entitled, but plenty are simply people making a genuine effort who still have a ways to go.

You don't need to baby them, but you don't need to sneer either.

I speak with confidence here for two reasons.  First, I'm a trained historian.  I know from history that adolescents were for centuries expected to rise and function at early hours, and seem to have been quite capable of doing so.  Second, the expectation that adolescents could and should perform well in the morning hours was still common not so many years ago in rural areas.  For example, I spent my teen years (13 and on) waking up at 5:30 a.m. five days a week to do heavy labor on construction sites with my father.  My brother and I were both quite capable of handling this early rising.  Although we were doing physical labor in a non-academic setting, the labor wasn't mindless--in its own way it required a good deal of cognitive effort and alertness.  Our developing brains were quite capable of it.  We weren't the only youths locally doing this sort of thing, either. 

I'm not denying that the research you cite above is observing an actual phenomenon on a molecular level.  What I'm questioning is the idea that this justifies some potentially far-reaching shifts in educational policy and scheduling.  That adolescents survived and even, apparently, thrived for so many years on early rising suggests that perhaps it was, and is, actually just what they need--something that trains their developing minds in ways that are beneficial to them in the long run.  I'm not saying it's easy or congenial for them.  I certainly didn't find getting up at 5:30 a.m. to lay bricks all day long easy and congenial when I was a teenager.  But a lot of what's good for us, especially when were adolescents, doesn't seem easy or congenial.

Adolescents like to stay up late recreating and hanging out with their peers.  This has been going on for centuries as well.  What has changed in recent generations is the extent to which society lets them get away with what they, in their immaturity, naturally want to do.  Because of this, a great many of them now have great trouble functioning in early morning classes.  They've been advocating for later morning starts for some time now.  Now advocates of later morning starts are citing research that is supposed to prove that adolescents naturally don't do well in the morning,  So wouldn't it be fairer to let them sleep in like they want to?

Well, sure, that's what they'd like to do.  But would this truly help them?  Or would not making adolescents get an early start potentially retard the process of developing more competent adult brains by depriving them of the training in early rising that the adolescent brain really needs?  That's my great concern.  I'm not trying to sneer at them, or act like a classic "kids today!" curmudgeon.  I'm genuinely concerned that efforts to push back school starting times could end up harming youths in the long run, even if they make them feel better in the short term.

[smallcleanrat]

This again?

Arcturus confirmed they were not making a serious suggestion to drastically change class times.

I said over and over I was specifically addressing the question of whether or not a biological component exists, independent of the question of whether or not any sort of 'accommodation' is warranted.