Urgent advice wanted - dd at uni about to hand in essays late and lose 5 marks for each - should she speak to tutor?

[Mumofunibaby]

Just that. My dd is in her 2nd year at uni and had 3 essays due together (2 yesterday, one today). She got in a right state and handed in 1 essay a few hours late yesterday, the second she is just finishing now (was also due by 2pm yesterday) and as a result, the third essay due today will also now be a few hours late.

The problem is that her uni deducts 5 marks per 24 hours an essay is late. So she is likely to lose 3 x 5 marks in total. Which is a lot. And a real shame as she just scraped a first in her first year grades, but could end up with a 2.2 in her final degree now.

She is dyslexic but hasn't registered as such at uni, partly because she struggled to organise a dyslexia assessment during lockdown.

Could anyone with recent uni experience or who is a tutor please advise - is it worth her contacting her personal or subject tutors to ask for some leniency? She says there is no point as they won't give any and stress you lose 5 marks if your essay is 1 minute late, let alone a few hours. But that does seem really harsh, as it's basically because they've all come at once so being late with the first one has had a domino effect on all the others.

She is very stressed and has been in floods of tears about this.

All suggestions appreciated. Thank you!

@sanbeiji Yes there is some flexibility but there could be much more.

Some time ago I saw a very interesting twitter thread from an American academic who had brought in a totally different system. Each essay had a soft deadline, but you could submit up to 3 days late no questions asked. If you needed more time, he would more or less automatically give you an extension.

He reported that most people still submitted on time, some people submitted a couple days late, and only a few people asked for longer extensions. I.e., the students did not abuse the system.

Personally I would like to do something like this but it's not possible here.

I'm a university lecturer. In any institution I've worked in (of 3), extenuating circs. would have to be documented beforehand. I would not able to apply any leniency retrospectively and would be surprised if any institution allowed this.

Has she ever had an assessment for dyslexia? I think it used to be a requirement to get an assessment within a certain time of starting university but they have removed that now. It’s not as if someone suddenly stops being dyslexic!
I’ve scanned some of the answers and clearly some people are not very knowledgeable about Sen. It is absolutely the case that she may have organisational difficulties. Also, very crucially dyslexics tend to work a lot slower than others. So they need accommodations. It’s not fair that they have the same deadline for longer pieces of work because it takes a lot longer for them to complete it.
She needs to go to learning support ASAP. She can probably access the disabled student grant to purchase assistive technology or proof reading etc if that’s what she needs.
People with disabilities often need a bit of extra help and support from their families. She’s done very well and must have worked extremely hard, harder than others without her disability. people telling you to keep out of it she’s an adult don’t have a clue. This problem is directly linked to her disability and society telling people they should just get on with it is part of the problem. I’d help her with accessing what she needs to put her at more of an equal footing to her peers and once you’ve done that I’m sure she’ll fly as she’s clearly a hard worker

If she can't cope mentally or academically, she should not be there. The whole point of university, as well as teaching you to think, is for you to be thrown in at the deep end with a reading list and have the drive and nouse to handle deadlines and do the frigging work!

This is a very old-fashioned view. I'm thankful that universities today are trying to be more supportive and inclusive.

@GoGoGretaDoll

If her grade is completely based on essays then one thing they are continuously testing is time management. She's going to lose 5 marks every time if she doesn't get on top of this. Your energy would be better spent helping her contact student services, get her dyslexia recorded and encouraging her to speak up when she's overwhelmed. Some CBT may also be helpful if perfectionism is the root of her issues.

I honestly don't want to put the boot in though, but this is why young grads get a bad rep... she needs to be managing this herself.

@Mumofunibaby I don't think this is as harsh as you think, I see this type of thing from young grads all the time. Imagine those lecturers / tutors are Clients of a commercial organisation. In 2 years time if she sits on a piece of work and doesn't tell the Client it can't be delivered on time (for whatever genuine reason) until after the deadline has already passed then it isn't going to go down well!!

It's her life. Stop helicoptering. You shouldn't even know all this detail. She's not a baby and needs to endure some consequences for her choices.

Maybe help her by not helping her? I.e., let her get the marks deducted this time (seeing as she hasn't sought help up to now and deadlines are normally set far in advance, it wouldn't be fair on other students if she had special treatment) and then focus on working out what's causing her time management issues and how to resolve them/if there's help available at the uni.

I graduated 3 years ago. If we handed in an essay late (even by a few seconds) we got a 0 for that assignment. I seriously would have struggled with having so many deadlines in a matter of days too. Dyslexia can make it more difficult to plan and organise work. Is there a way she can argue for more time on the basis of Dyslexia? They offer it in exams but understandably that is different.

Things might be different at some unis but all of my friends who went somewhere in England, Scotland or Wales didn’t have their first year count towards their degree. Also, there is this grading system at the end of year 3 that kind of deletes the bottom 20% of marks (something like that), so some of the worst grades don’t count towards the average total grade, they’re just wiped out. Can she discuss the grading system with her Tutor so she understands?

Please don’t despair, I did awfully in my second year but worked really hard in 3rd year and graduated with a 2:1.

I think she should accept the lower marks and use it as a lesson for the future. I was top of year 1 at university of the whole law cohort and won a prize and had a pre entry academic scholarship too. I then got 2/2 in year 1 (although I wasn't late with anything) and had to work extremely hard in year 3 to get a 2/1 (only a third of people got 2.1 in those days and only one girl on our course got a first). i did it and indeed won two prizes for being top in year 3 of 2 subjects but it certainly meant a lot of work to make up and my law job was conditional on a 2/1 too so all that pressure was on there but it was fine in the end.

Accept the lower marks now and consider submitting a psychological assessment for dyslexia for extra help or time for year 3 perhaps - assume it takes 6 months to get all that organised.

I have ADHD, I’m a student and have found University extremely supportive and flexible with deadlines as stated in my Access Statement.

Your DD needs to contact DSA and the disability team at her University.

However it won’t be applied retrospectively, and she will just have to take the hit. 5 marks is lenient compared to what my University knock off.

Also, her first year grades don’t count towards her degree score, and Uni gets more difficult every year - scoring a First in her first year is great, but will require more effort to maintain that grade in her second and third years.

Wow - there are some nasty posts here. Students, especially the current second years, have had a really shit time recently. Their entire first year was disrupted by the pandemic; some of them are only getting to know campus this year and finding friends this year. Some of them are dealing with strike action on top of everything else. Sometimes it's helpful to try and be a bit kind rather than sneering at people who are struggling. I'm really glad that I work in a Department where academics would be horrified to take that line about students.

It’s not fair that they have the same deadline for longer pieces of work because it takes a lot longer for them to complete it.

But the OP says that her DD's work is too long, it is the editing of it that has made her miss the deadline.

OP I think it's tough for you because no parent wants their child to be upset. But screwing up at Uni is part of the learning curve of life. Definitely encourage her to contact the Uni about her dyslexia but I would also gently tell her that she needs to suck up the penalties and work out a plan so it doesn't happen again.

I was a course administrator for almost a decade, I'm now a PhD student who teaches university courses. I'm also dyslexic (among other things), which was assessed and diagnosed via Disability Services at my uni during the pandemic.

Where I teach (which is also where I managed the admin side of academic programmes for years), extensions can only be given before the deadline. Retroactive extensions are against policy. Our hands are also tied with regard to disabilities if the student is not registered with Disability Services - we can't just take someone's word for it. I spent years begging students to make an appointment with them as soon as possible because it can take a while to get on the books and we can't put in place special requirements until it's official.

And for PPs who say that clashing deadlines should be avoided, that's fine but most of my students take classes with different departments and sometimes even different faculties. Deadlines can't always be coordinated so it's up to the student to pick their classes according to what suits their timetable. If there are too many clashes they have a window at the start of semester to change their electives.

I truly understand the stress caused by perfectionism but your DD needs to get support with that. My thesis supervisor always says "the best draft is a finished one" because you can't mark a blank page. Something is better than nothing.

We all need to learn time management somewhere OP and it looks like this is the time for your daughter. I sympathise as I had terrible time management at Uni and would be awake for 24 hours before every deadline getting things ready.

My course didn't really involve essays so maybe someone with a more wordy degree could advise but it doesn't sound right to be hugely over your wordcount and then have to trim it down for days. I'm coming from an engineering degree and we were always trying to pad our stuff out to meet the wordcount lol. Is it worth looking into essay structure/planning techniques to help her? It sounds like such a waste to write lots and cut it out but as I say its not something I've ever had to worry about!

I personally don't think a 2:2 is bad, but then it is what I got!

I am an academic at a university in a social sciences discipline. This is just my own view based on what happens in my department in these situations. I would be very unlikely to deduct marks for something a couple of hours late. If it's a day late, I probably would though. At my university, you can apply for exceptional circumstances up to 48 hours after the deadline and there is also a grace period that students can apply for, giving them 24 extra hours. Also, if a student got in touch with me, struggling, I would try my best to help them and refer them to a support service within the university. Where I work, students with dyslexia usually get flexible deadlines anyway. I would advise your DD to check the web pages for her university to see what she might be entitled to (or maybe you can do this for her).

My uni has it that extensions are just granted if you are the 2020 cohort due to COVID. No questions asked but she should have asked them before hand. Has she called/emailed her tutor?

There are a significant number of people here who do not understand the executive functioning difficulties that are a frequent comorbid of dyslexia. Before you decide that someone is ‘just disorganised’ perhaps a little reading on the subject/difficulty mentioned may be appropriate.
OP Tell her to get along to student services; they will be able to provide her with both help and advice.

(Marks from year two are often your three best marks so if she gets the help now, she may be able to turn things around).

She knows she's got dyslexia, and knows that it might take her longer, so even if it takes her longer than average, she should have enough time (essays are given well in advance).

The university will expect her to plan for this, the same way that someone with limited IT, or am unmovable event the week before would. It's going to be something she'll have to do in work in the future.

Needing to cut down an essay to fit within the word limit is a very common thing, and she needs to budget for that time.

I’ve got 4 pieces of work due this month - all of them big, hulking pieces including essays, diagnostic algorithms, lab reports (x10!) and other pieces of work that require R, Excel, Python.

It’s not fun, but they were set end of October with plenty of time.

There are then another 3 due end of March, 2 middle of April and 4 exams in May.

The workload is immense for me as a single mother of 3, but as I'm registered with DSA and the University disability team, staff are flexible and friendly.

Everyone had guidelines work with - they wouldn't be able to make allowances for my ADHD if I hadn't done the leg work required to level the playing field in my first year.

I went to Oxbridge, they always allowed leniency and I got it a few times due to a health issue.

When I was at uni (admittedly a long time ago) I had to hand in 3 or 4 essays in the same week (often on the same day) four times a year. Yes, that's a lot of essays to have ready in one go, but I knew all the deadlines from the start of each semester. They were testing our ability to manage our own workload and our own time, that was the point. If any were late by one minute (according to the clock above the box you posted them into - I guess nowadays you submit them online) they weren't marked. There were very few reasons why they made an exception to this rule.

If she doesn't learn to plan her time and her work now then she's not going to do well in the workplace. They can't hand a first to someone who does this. That will give potential employers a false view of what she's capable of.

If she can learn from this and avoid doing it again and keep producing the kind of work she produced in her first year (which must have been good if got a first), then I would imagine she's still capable of a 2:1.

Univ lecturer here. We would consider a case like this but we are pretty good at dealing with learning support.
What your daughter must do is sort out a learning plan or whatever the equivalent is - depending on the nature of the learning difficulty our students with plans are treated sympathetically.
Otherwise we would treat this as a late submission in which case our penalties are tougher - bare pass mark only.

A lot of the problem is she has done so much reading, for these recent essays, that her word counts are way too high, so she is having to spend lots of time reducing her word count or her essays would fail right off, because they were overlength. So she can't physically hand them in till she's done that.

she was getting high 60s to low 70s in her essays previously. So 5 marks off could bring her down to low 60s (out if 100).

Oh OP please step back and let your DD stand on her own two feet.

Unless she's living at home it's mad that you know this level of detail. What are you going to do when she starts her first job and messes up? Call her boss?

Let her fail in a relatively safe environment here. Don't helicopter her for the rest of her uni career and let her join the world of work as an adult who's never had to take a risk without you to catch her if she falls. It's cruel because she'll be competing with people who aren't hampered by that.

Step way back and let her solve this by herself.

OP - I’d also encourage her to to do some ADHD screening tests as it’s very common for it to be overlooked in girls and generally only comes to light much later.

Mine was actually picked up by the University disability team, and I paid privately for an assessment, was diagnosed and now have medication and other support options available through DSA.

OP I am really REALLY glad that my DC (22 and 18) still talk to me and ask for advice now when they have a problem so I can help and support them. It doesn't mean I wade in and sort everything out for them (and I know you aren't either in this case). I offer advice and support so they can sort things out themselves. And I'm really really glad that they do that and not worry and stress and feel they are alone.

I am 54 and I still phone my mom for support and advice and a listening ear!

So take no notice of the people who are implying she's pathetic and you are mollycoddling her. She's phoned the phone person in her life who she knows she can rely on to support her and that's her mom and I'm so pleased for her and you that she has.

I hope she can get something sorted. What a shame she didn't speak up earlier and get an extension. Well, we all live and learn! Good luck