The LP's Ten Laws for End-of-Semester Teaching

1.  If Weather = +70 F, then classroom attendance = - 1/3 (x) (where x is the number of total students enrolled).
2.  All students who do not have legitimate reasons for a late withdrawal will demand them.
3.  All students who do have legitimate reasons for a late withdrawal will soldier on.
4.  A (number of weeks left in the semester) * B (number of classes any given student has missed) * C (percentage of grades below C) = Z% (likelihood that the student will request extra credit)
5.  If the instructor is especially enthusiastic about the reading, then the students will not be.
6.  It is never a good idea to teach Thomas Carlyle at the end of a semester.
7.  As the semester advances, the number of students who bring food to class increases exponentially.
8.  It is unwise for any instructor to expect students to remember material taught during the first weeks of the course.
9.  Instructors who need to administer course evaluations may wish to consider doing so before returning the second set of term papers.
10.  Chocolate is always helpful. 

Comments

[ceresina]

I think #4 should be
1-(A*B*C%) = Z%

And chocolate is especially helpful for the professor. (Oh, wait: that's what you meant.)

[ricki]

Personally, I think evaluations should be given closer to the middle of the semester: before it gets miserably hot (at least in the spring), before everyone's burnt out, and perhaps also before the idiosyncracies of certain students have started to visibly get on the professor's nerves.

I think you also need a multiplier on #1 for classes taught before 10 am. I've actually taught classes-of-two in my 8 am class. (And no, I'm not being incomparably hard by not just letting them go; they're getting material everyone needs to expect to be tested on).

[John Thomas McGuire]

At least you don't have to teach Samuel Richardson at the end of the semester! I just finished reading Clarissa, reputed to be the longest novel in English (over 1500 pages.)

[Dr. Virago]

And never teach the Morte Darthur at the end of the semester, either. Next time, I'm starting with it.