Students occasionally experience an error when submitting their work. When “control-z” is not an option, they may have to restart their work with knowledge from their lost assignments. Many have experienced something similar and lost a significant portion of their work. However, what is often most important in those situations is how students take ownership of their work to turn it in as soon as possible.
Tyler Adams is a HAHS junior in the school’s Game Theory Design class. Recently, he lost a huge portion of his work due to a computer error. He explained that the project he worked on in Unity’s game engine before Christmas break got corrupted. He had saved it on his computer as he always does, but when he returned from break, all his work was corrupted with no apparent cause. It deleted many game assets like objects and much of his coding, all of which had taken him two months to make. Though some aspects were preserved like scripts, Unity’s coding language that adds function to objects, he had to troubleshoot them for errors. For example, 15 things in his game broke because a single letter in a script was lowercase. Despite the inconvenience, Tyler restarted the project and completed it by working on it during class and Flex for three days.
Mr. King teaches the Game Theory Design class. He primarily makes his deadlines to signify when the class is moving to a new topic. The goal is to turn work in on time, but he accepts late work because he feels teaching students a course-relevant skill is more important than giving them life skills like timeliness. Moreover, he grades based on one’s understanding of the course material to reflect the knowledge gained. Despite his leniency, he states that he cannot grade what he does not have, making it a student’s responsibility to complete their incomplete and tardy work.
Nevertheless, Mr. King sometimes works with students to rectify their assignments. For example, if he closely followed a student’s project before an incident, he might assign a smaller assignment to demonstrate their understanding. In the past, however, many have submitted nothing after losing their work, and it is rare for students to go to Mr. King to make a plan. Still, hard-working students like Tyler often ask for help to turn in their lost work. In his case, he had until the end of the marking period to turn in his project. As such, he worked diligently during FLEX period to complete his assignment over three days.
Students are sometimes dealt a bad hand and accidentally lose their hard work. Those in a similar situation should remember that teachers want their students to succeed and can be lenient depending on the circumstances. Also, it is important not to dwell on what is already lost. Instead, students should show a desire to submit their work and take responsibility for their success.
