A picture is worth a thousand words

And I mean the one I asked you to submit last week, you guys.

I have close to 300 students. Learning the names at the beginning of the semester is a tremendous challenge. Remembering who is who at the end of the semester (when those extra points for effort really count) is tough. And a lot of you could REALLY benefit from me remembering you.

Out of all the students I asked for a picture, roughly 1/3 gave me one. It could have been anything, really - even a black and white copy of a real picture. 2/3 did not bother.

Call it a cultural difference if you will, but this picture situation is quite exasperating. Whenever I ask students to do something and give them a week, it never occurs to me that it would not get done. I do not walk into class thinking, would they have remembered? I walk into a classroom, three-hole puncher in hand, ready to file the attendance sheet - last and first name, day and class time + picture.

Which brings me to my next point. Not completing an assignment you have been given talks about your attitude and the level of commitment to the class you are taking. And poor attitude is ... well, we went over that in class and illustrated it with specific examples, I don't want to repeat myself.

The one thing I would repeat though is the exact thing I said whenever I distributed the attendance sheets in Week 1. Without an attendance sheet, I would not mark you as present.

And I didn't.