Hi. My name is Liz Baish. You might remember me from such events as [insert class here].
Is there a, uh, deadline on the syllabus? ‘Cause if there is, I wanted to let you know in advance that I like to maintain a little distance between me and deadlines. Sure, some people might call it procrastination or even sheer laziness, but I prefer to call it a meaningful and calculated disregard for the fabric of our educational system!
Deadlines create an atmosphere wherein the achievement of deadlines is damn near unobtainable for students. For a class this summer I read some of writings of Michel deCerteau, and his ideas apply rather appropriately to this situation. (You can’t just expose students to basic tenets of critical theory and not expect us to explore the pragmatic side of it, can you?)
DeCerteau attests to the different ways people assert agency within imposed systems. The more rigid and inflexible an imposed system, the more creatively a person will find ways to “slack off” within it. It is the nature of the system, really, behind so-called procrastination or laziness. An inflexible system propels people to devise their own ways of subverting imposed regulations–a way of making that system theirs, as deCerteau claims.
Furthermore, deadlines are chockfull of contradictions. By definition, deadlines are inflexible, right? Even the origin of the word “deadline” attests to this fact. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the original use as ” a line drawn around a military prison, beyond which a prisoner is liable to be shot down.” Kind of a testy term to include in our educational vernacular, eh? Regardless, students are subjected to this inflexible line, creating for them an image of a matter of life and death.
The best part, though, is that this “dead-line” which seems violently determinable is always arbitrary. I mean, is there a profound reason why a paper is due Feb. 4 and not Feb. 12? Does it matter if I turn it in a week or two late if, for instance, you might not start grading it until the weekend after the paper is due?
Furthermore, the right circumstances will allow a student to turn in a paper late. Quite frankly I’ m struck by the subjective nature of excuses. What exactly determines the gravity of an excuse? What determines an acceptable reason for an extension? And how long an extension does a death in the family really afford? Is the length and duration of an extension universally agreed upon? Absolutely not. Each situation is thus evaluated and treated differently.
This wonderful subjectivity of excuses compels me to ask the question: does it really affect anyone if my great-grandmother really died? Or if I really had mono or the flu? Or if my computer ate my paper? Or for ten thousand other reasons I was not compelled to finish my paper? An excuse is an excuse is an excuse.
Surely some might argue that, while having a choice in attending college, a university is not an imposed system. But do I really have a choice in going to school? I like to study literature. Where can I do that if not through the educational system?
Granted I spent the brunt of my early twenties tinkering within the American secondary education system, looking for a school less “imposing.” Despondent after a brief and listless stint at a liberal arts college back home in Virginia, I transferred to Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt. Goddard seemed more in agreement with my educational ideals. The curriculum is entirely self-designed by each student and consequently there are no classes, no tests, and no grades.
While I loved the freedom at Goddard, there was something lacking in the reality of the system. Being so flexible and so nontraditional, the school actively engages with the process of its own subversions. After a year of it, though, I found myself feeling increasingly segregated from the rest of the world. Goddard is awesome, but what is the point of being all subversive and stuff if you are limited to acting within a small community that already agrees with you?
Craving a return to the traditions that I both loathe and yet cannot bring myself to escape from, I decided to get back into the mainstream system. I transferred to USM because of the stellar faculty of the English Department. Armed with newfound educational tactics learned at Goddard, here I remain, volubly opposed to deadlines but nonetheless critically dependent and engaged with all I am learning here at USM.
As you might imagine, I’ m not hung up on conclusions, either. So, in short, my esteemed professors, when I hand in my papers late, realize that it’ s not my choice to slack off. Maybe my great-grandmother really died, or my computer really ate my paper, or maybe I’ m just wallowing in a fit of abstraction brought about by the wily theories of postmodernity you’ ve taught me.
It’ s not me, you know. It’ s the system.