Professor Elam

I read a piece today in which Mike Gorbachev referred to Parkinson’s Law.

This is simply the idea that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. The reality of this is the extraordinary time needed when a bureaucracy is involved. Court cases, patent applications, hearings before the FCC, can all take years for what is essentially a statement of facts already known. An anecdotal example is that the US Navy operates numerous ships powered by nuclear reactors, France and Japan use nukes for their energy programs, yet the US nuke program has now been ground to a halt and is paying $140 a barrel for fossil fuel to its enemies. 

 Lo and behold as I read I came across Student Syndrome. The fact that this occurs so often in the same time and place makes light of the reality.  It is so named because students typically ask a professor for more time to complete a project. My experience is that they typically will ask for the very last day possible to present an assignment.  The problem of course is that this eliminates the time buffer they have requested. Indeed, in class this past week students asked to present Tuesday and Wednesday rather than Monday. I inquired if in fact they intended to wait until Monday night to do the assignment.  The alternative would be to huddle on Friday by internet or e mail, assign tasks, and have them done by Sunday.  Student syndrome points up that the buffer of time evaporates as at the last minute there is no buffer left.  Indeed this happens again and again. A book report can be assigned for the entire semester yet at the last week books are still unread, this is occurring right now in some classes.

Other examples include the frenzy of last minute tax return filing. And indeed that works both ways. While tax return preparers complete the circle by also asking for more time before an IRS audit, an IRS auditor remarked to me that most of the returns they look at have actually been filed with an extension of time to eventually get the return done. So like the client, the preparer continues the student syndrome.   In my lifetime I have seen ‘tax season’  and the frenzy of last minute work go from April 15 to August 15 and now to Oct 15, the literal last date allowed by law if an extension is filed on April 15.

The point is that when one dispenses with the time buffer, there is no time for reconsideration or checking the results 24-48 hours after completion. This would of course fall under the costs of appraisal in a Quality Circle. A failure to do so will lead to an external failure during the presentation. And indeed this is an external failure cost.  If the presentation is poorly done, and on the last day of class, there is literally no opportunity for a second chance for the student to show that they have learned from a mistake and improved. And so when asked for a referral on their ability after the fact we professors can only say,
beats me. ………