To borrow a line from Dennis Miller, I don’t mean to go off
on a rant here, but how long does it take to grade an essay? It can’t possibly take a month, yet that is
how long I have been waiting for a grade for my Narrative Writing essay. Well, it’s not quite a month…but it’s close enough. In three days it will be a month since I
submitted it.
Now, I started the English Composition course back in
FEBRUARY. That’s right, I started this
course six months ago. I did take a
break of a few weeks after finishing the first few assignments because I was
waiting for a grade from my first essay.
I nearly finished the Principles of Marketing course in the meantime
while I awaited my grade. I’m now down
to the final two essays, but I’m still waiting for this grade.
Yes, I can continue to work on the other essays while
waiting for this grade. But, what if the
unthinkable happens? What if I bombed
on this Narrative Writing essay and have to pull a rewrite? If I work ahead, does that mean I’m off the
mark with the final two essays if I didn’t master Narrative Writing?
As I have said before, this is really my only complaint
about Penn Foster
College. Sure, they probably have hundreds of thousands
of students, but a month is a long time to wait for a grade on an assignment. There are troops taking college courses in Iraq
who are getting more immediate feedback than that.
Meanwhile, I received a “special notice” in my student
message center informing me that Penn
Foster College
will no longer mail printed copies of its Undergraduate Catalog and Student
Handbook. Instead, it is available
online through the Student Center
as a download. I really don’t mind
this. I’m nearly finished with the semester
and I don’t necessarily need to read my student handbook in printed form.
One thing I have noticed is I don’t have access to the July
student newsletter through the student portal.
The June edition is still there, and here we are halfway through the
month of August. Perhaps this is some
kind of oversight, but I hope this, along with the long wait times for grades
and discontinuation of printed handbooks, isn’t a sign that student services
are slipping.