Sure enough, two of my students (in a class of four) have withdrawn from my graduate-level seminar in Business Law and Ethics for Managers — rather than write and turn in a cited 1,500-word paper. One of them claimed a combination of a death in the family (which made him sad but he wasn’t broken down about it) and an inability to assimilate or convey information by the written word. The other one just bailed out without any explanation at all. Of the two students who turned in papers, one of them obviously failed to understand the nature of the assignment and did not avail himself of the numerous opportunities available to him to seek clarification or to otherwise get my assistance in writing the paper.
Yes, some people are auditory or tactile learners, but if you’re going to pursue a graduate degree, you’ve got to anticipate that at some point you’ll have to do some writing.
It’s quite disappointing. The class is much less fun with only two students. The remaining students are bright, although one is much less motivated than the other — this guy I have to poke with a pointy stick to get him to say anything at all. Okay, there’s going to be students like that, too, I realize. But it’s a blow to my morale to lose half my students because I asked them to produce academic work.
