A few weeks ago, the semester at Mercy University drew to a close, and now that I’m done submitting grades, I’m relieved. I find that the end-of-semester push takes a lot of wind, and coupled simultaneously with a final run of tour dates for Blue Öyster Cult, this one was a handful.
My Recording Workshop class had a term project that was due two weeks prior to the end of the semester. I set the deadline date early enough to allow myself time to review the projects and supporting documents without the pressure of “I’ve got to get through all of these in a week so I can submit grades.” It also gives me an opportunity to allow a bit of grace toward students who miscue. And—as typically happens each year—one of my students had a catastrophic miscue: They lost their term project session.
At the start of the semester, I warn my students of the pitfalls they’ll unexpectedly encounter doing said project: Musicians will flake out at the last minute, our studios will get booked mad busy when the end of the semester approaches (with students from other classes needing studio time to complete their projects), people will get sick, and, of course, there’s the issue of maintaining files.
Part of my diatribe on Day One includes the old “If you don’t have your project in two places, you don’t have it,” but I’m the old man in the room so what the heck do I know? One student had damage to her laptop when it was subject to an unexpected soaking rain. Luckily, she was able to recover most of her work. But another student lost most of the work on their project. Or, more accurately, lost more than half of the audio files in the project. Ya’ gotta love Pro Tools. Yikes.
• Mix Live Blog: Don’t Sell Yourself Short
Unfortunately, the student notified me of the issue the day before the project was due. I have no problem extending a deadline, “as long as you don’t ask me at 11:59 p.m. the day before the deadline.” That’s also part of my Day One diatribe. Good thing they informed me of the issue at only 8:58 p.m. Good grief.
We went through the usual routine: Did you try opening the session on the different computers, including the same one you last used to record (we have dozens of machines in our studios)? Did you try opening the backup documents automatically stored in the PT Session File Backups folder? And, of course, Did you back up the project to a thumb drive or department server? And, of course, there was no backup. I hate to say I told you so…
Discover more great stories—get a free Mix SmartBrief subscription!
There were two things, aside from the lack of backup, that really frustrated me about the incident: First, the student had a rough mix that sounded really good—but that ain’t gonna get you a passing grade. Second, it seemed to me that the student had no urgency to fix the issue. I’ve seen this in the past where a student reacted by jumping up and down with their hair on fire, asking, “Professor, can I please have another week?” To which I would grant an extension and wait for the student to frantically re-record the project from scratch. I respect that. But to not attempt fixing the issue by any means necessary shows me an unprofessional attitude, which, alas, was followed by a correspondingly unprofessional grade. Adding more to my upset is the fact that this student is wholly capable, if they choose to apply themselves. But they didn’t.
Sometimes being the adult in the room stinks.
