nice language to reduce student guilting

[smasongarrison]

A Gentle Reminder of a Professor's Ethical Boundaries

Hello Everyone,

This is a gentle reminder that professors are not able to provide extra credit points, extra assignments, or accept late submissions from any individual student in order to help them to pass the course.

The university requires professors to grade the exams and assignments to evaluate student understanding of the course content. This is required so that the University knows that the student has shown mastery of the course material and are thus able to award them a degree that indicates that they have expertise in the field they are going to work in. If a student does poorly on exams or on assignments to such a degree that it has heavily impacted their grade, it is important that the student re-take the course so that they can fully master the content.

If you feel like you have extenuating circumstances that have made it difficult for you to attend class and complete the assignments, you can drop from the class by filling out the required forms so that you can re-take the course again. The forms do require a signature from me, and I would gladly sign those if you need. I would suggest that you carefully read through the drop forms and talk to your advisor if you decide to drop the course as it can negatively impact financial aid or registration for other courses.

Please let me know if you would like to talk further and we can set up a time to meet in office hours or before or after class.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/uow3dz/something_i_announce_at_the_end_of_every_semester/

[smasongarrison]

"While you should never hesitate or be afraid to ask me questions, please consider first whether or not the answer can readily be found in the syllabus. If you email me a question that is already answered in the syllabus, I will respond you with a link to the syllabus. This may be in the form of a meme."
source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/wdhyyo/what_do_you_want_incoming_firstyears_to_know_that/

[smasongarrison]

I'm going to gently remind you that I'm not an automated robot sitting behind the computer just waiting for your messages. I am NOT on-call 24 hours a day. I'll do my best to reply to your messages in a timely manner, but I am off-the-clock after 5:00pm and you will receive a delayed response on nights and weekends. Work-life balance and healthy boundaries y'all! (Tough Love: lack of planning and preparation on your part, does not constitute an emergency response on my part.)

source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/10uurzu/do_they_think_we_just_sit_around_waiting_for_them/j7e363k/