"Mark" has few mechanical errors, but struggles with evidence

Now that I've gotten a feel for the general differences between the procrastinated and non-procrastinated papers I collected, I'm going back over the procrastinated ones to better understand what's going on there. Here's what I've learned about "Mark"'s paper.

Mark reports that he wrote his research paper two days before it was due and then rewrote the whole thing one day before it was due. He says he put it off so long because he's "lazy," but he feels he spent enough time on it anyway.

He's right at the average length for the papers in his class and has rate of surface errors in the first quartile. And his sentence structure seems reasonable for a FYC class with pretty frequent subordination. So his lack of error isn't obviously caused by avoiding challenges. He didn't report doing any proofreading.

On the other hand, his rate of problems with evidence is the highest in his class. His top two problems are weak lead-ins for quotations and unsupported claims. (These are the top two problems for non-procrastinators in his class as well.) In Mark's case, most of his quotations are "dropped in" without signal phrases, but they do logically follow the sentences before them. He also relies completely on secondary sources about a comic book character, never directly citing the comics themselves.

It's hard to say whether starting his paper a few days sooner would have helped Mark. It might have given him more time to look up sources for some of the claims he wanted to make. But it probably wouldn't have prevented his dropped quotes. In my experience teaching and tutoring, people who drop quotes simply don't understand that it's a no-no--even after multiple one-on-one sessions intending to explain it. Unless he used those extra days to take his paper to the writing center or conference with his instructor, Mark probably wouldn't have fixed those dropped quotes because he probably didn't think they needed fixing.

Procrastinated papers have more problems with evidence

While mechanical errors didn't prove any more of a problem for procrastinators than their non-procrastinating peers, the same is not true for problems using evidence. Under evidence problems I'm including problems integrating quotations, unsupported claims, and using the wrong kind of evidence (such as quoting others' opinions to stand in as the writer's conclusion). I do not include citation errors. Since these were freshman research papers, most of the evidence was of the sort found in books and websites, but I count examples under evidence as well.

Both classes had procrastinators in the fourth quartile for rate of errors in use of evidence. That's .37 and .13 errors per 100 words for the classes overall but .67 and 1.0 for procrastinators. Looking over the kinds of errors, nothing jumps out as being more of a problem for procrastinators than for the rest of the classes. The distribution of kinds of evidence errors looks to be about the same.

I was a little surprised after finding little difference in terms of length and mechanical errors to find a difference in use of evidence. One explanation that jumps out at me is the possibility that no one--procrastinator or not--is effectively proofreading her paper. I should look back over the questionnaires to see if procrastinators were any more or less likely to report proofreading.

One thing that separates mechanical errors from use of evidence is the expectation of prior knowledge in first year composition. While the classes probably had some instructions in avoiding comma splices, I'm sure if I asked the instructors they'd confirm that more class time was spent on research and quotation integration. So why might non-procrastinators do better here? Well, I'm tempted to think that non-procrastinators were more likely to actually be in class. I don't have any data on attendance, so this is just speculation. But if a student procrastinates because they don't want to work on the assignment, they might just skip class for similar reasons, missing out on important lessons. On the other hand, students with no free time (such as those working full time) may not be keeping up studying or may miss class for other reasons. So I can imagine that students who wait until the last minute to write their papers might also be students who miss out on lessons. But that may be a reach.

Why would procrastination reduce error?

As I said below, my data indicate a slightly lower rate of error in procrastinated papers than otherwise. It'd be a bit of a leap to conclude without more research that procrastination helps. But lets say it did turn out that waiting to the last minute resulted in writing with fewer errors. What might the reasons be?

Usually when students explain that they prefer to procrastinate, they allude to creative energy of some kind that only arrives as the deadline looms. I can't recall a student ever telling me they made less errors that way, but such a situation isn't entirely unimaginable. In my imagination, the student thrives on the stress of needing to put a paper together in a short amount of time and actually becomes more productive. Although this is possible, I'm fairly skeptical. Sometimes I've thought I became productive when I procrastinated and then found a bunch of performance errors circled by my professors.

Students who struggle more with cognitive errors (a term I'm not in love with) may be a different matter. Since they misunderstand the rules of grammar, they can actually make their papers more error-filled the more they work at them. But since my study was of freshman composition classes and not basic writers, this seems unlikely to be the main explanation.

Maybe fewer errors isn't even a good thing. People screw up when they push the boundaries of their comfort zone. Freshman papers often contain errors that simply come from imitating a style they haven't yet mastered. Helping students to master the style they're already going for is a lot easier than trying to get students to stop writing sentences that sound like they could follow "See Spot run." Students who think that grammatical errors are what separates good and bad writing may have perfect grammar but still write bad papers.

I need to go back to the papers that were procrastinated on and determine what kinds of errors they contain and whether the lower rate of error might have been caused by playing it safe and not attempting anything more complex than a compound subject.

Procrastination Reduces Errors?

As it turns out, of the students in the three classes I've studied, the procrastinators didn't write particularly worse papers. At least not by the two indicators I've looked at so far.

One might think that waiting to the last minute to start a research paper would result in it being too short. Nope. There was more difference in length from one class to another than between procrastinators and non-procrastinators. One of the procrastinators actually wrote the longest paper in his class. None of them wrote the shortest. Procrastination has no clear consequence on paper length.

It would also seem reasonable to expect that procrastinated papers would contain more errors, for two reasons. One, waiting too long to start the paper may leave the writer without time to proofread. This should leave evidence of "performance errors"--the kinds of mistakes we all make when we don't watch ourselves. Two, students who avoid the task of writing may well be doing so because they believe they are bad at it. These students might leave evidence of "cognitive errors"--the kinds of mistakes we make when we are confused about the rules. These mistakes will simply not be caught by self-proofreading and can actually be made worse (since the proofreading is done by the student's wrong impression of the actual rules).

But no, procrastinators don't make more errors. Of both classes with procrastinated papers, the error rate was lower with procrastinators. The procrastinators in one class had an error rate of .5 errors per 100 words. The class average (median) was .67--slightly higher. In the other class, procrastinators had an error rate of .9 errors per 100 words. That classes averaged 1.7.

Here again the difference between classes is stronger than the difference between procrastinators and students as a whole. Procrastination doesn't increase errors, but the numbers are awfully close (.5 to .67 and .9 to 1.7) with a limited amount of data (less than fifty students) to jump to the conclusion that it helps.

My Thesis

So I've had some troubles with my thesis. Getting human subjects approval took longer than I anticipated, and there were some hangups collecting data in a timely fashion, leading to me collecting data right up until when I was supposed to have the thing actually finished.

But I knew I could finish over the summer. Then my husband and I separated, shaking up my whole life. I thought I'd still be able to work on my thesis but I stupidly ended up working two jobs to total about sixty hours a week. I was sleeping in split shifts, so the thesis was not getting done.

Then my husband asked me to move back in with him. I got back to only working one job (thirty hours) but was focusing (rightly) on my marriage. But part of what we learned in counseling was the importance of alone time--so I should have been able to make time for my thesis.

When my manager at Burger King found out I didn't have job prospects for the fall, she offered me a promotion. Maybe it was stupid to take it. Now I'm working fifty hours a week. I'm telling myself that now that my husband is in school instead of home all the time in the evenings like he was over the summer that I'll be able to sit down and actually write. But I presume I'll come up with another conflict then.

When I walked through the Missouri State campus today, I realized I was seeing potential Burger King customers, not writing students. That concerns me a bit. I realize that when I quit Burger King last fall in order to concentrate on school, that I missed it more than I'm missing teaching.

Bending or Breaking My Own Rules?

My department has a policy that all major assignments must be turned in, in the order assigned, before a student is eligible to pass a course. I state this in my syllabus along with my interpretation : I will not accept a paper after the due date for the next paper. In accordance with this policy, I emailed a few of my students a while back to let them know they would no longer be eligible to pass.

One student asked for an exception. He "really need[ed] to pass." He hadn't been to class in over a month and hadn't turned in a paper in two months (and those by email). For a while there, I honestly couldn't remember what he looked like.

I told him to come by my office with a better case than "I really need to pass" and we'd talk.

I looked through my grade book. In order for him to pass, he needed to submit a revision, four new papers, and make nineteen blog posts, all in less than a week, all at passing quality. When he showed up for his appointment, I told him that I didn't think he could pull it off, but I'd let him try.

I'm still not entirely sure I should have budged on my interpretation of the English department policy not to accept papers turned in out of order. But I feel like at least this way he can't blame his teacher for his failure.

Comp Exams!

I just finished my comp exams. I only spent four days studying (but one of those was the entire day). I'm pretty happy with how I did. The comp exam questions for my area of emphasis are clearly fifteen years old, as they deal with dead issues and don't mention any theorist who was first active past 1990. But I went ahead and worked a current theorist into one of those questions that was situated in the 1980s. I hope that makes me look smart rather than evasive. (I did cover the old stuff too.) I also answered a question about personality theory because I love to talk about the Myers-Brigg. I ran out of time on that one before I was able to refine it too much, so I hope it still makes sense.

Update: I passed!