essay about it was too late

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Short story: i was too late, i was too late....

Death is an interesting concept, one that most people will never have the chance to grasp before it's too late. I, however, am not one of those lucky people. I am one of the few who has looked Death right in the eyes and held my breath as I feared the worst. It was then that I realized my mistake, as once you've stood up to Death...You become Death. You start to see weird visions in your active mind, you start to see people losing their souls in your unconscious dreams. Only this time, they aren't dreams. You can close your eyes and lay down to rest, but you'll never know if you actually get rest...Or if you watch somebody take their final breaths and move on to their next steps. You could fall asleep expecting to have dreams of fairies and butterflies, only to be met by people crying and screaming as a house burns down in flames with people still inside. You can never escape the never-ending loop.

I didn't realize any of this until it was far too late. I had made a deal with Death; I wouldn't die, but instead, I would work for him. I would help him gather souls and have people move on to their next (and final) steps in life. For over 100 years, I'd been assisting him with taking people's hands and walking them to the gates where they take their final steps, I'd been helping them figure out where they were going to—Heaven or Hell—and then I'd open the gate using the proper key as they looked back one last time before stepping into the gate.

I didn't know then that my time was going to be up soon as well.

My heart was racing as I tried to outrun the clock. I was running late, and the soul that was supposed to be passing to the other side was going to expire if I didn't run quick enough. I heaved myself over the edge of the balcony, sprinting over to the stairs and thanking every spiritual divine that existed for the ability to be completely intangible, just passing through everybody that I would have collided into otherwise. Of course, I could choose to turn that ability on and off at ease... But what would that use be if I'm trying to get a soul to the other side? That would be completely pointless to just keep running into everybody that I tried to get past.

Then again, maybe that would have been for the best. I regret trying to save their horrible being. They were a truly horrible person, and I cannot believe that I was even attempting to help somebody like that.

I failed that attempt, I caused the soul to expire before I could get to it. The entire city burned down. The sky was ashen and dark with smoke billowing in the background. I was too late.

I was...Too late...

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25 beatles lyrics: your go-to guide for every situation, the best lines from the fab four.

For as long as I can remember, I have been listening to The Beatles. Every year, my mom would appropriately blast “Birthday” on anyone’s birthday. I knew all of the words to “Back In The U.S.S.R” by the time I was 5 (Even though I had no idea what or where the U.S.S.R was). I grew up with John, Paul, George, and Ringo instead Justin, JC, Joey, Chris and Lance (I had to google N*SYNC to remember their names). The highlight of my short life was Paul McCartney in concert twice. I’m not someone to “fangirl” but those days I fangirled hard. The music of The Beatles has gotten me through everything. Their songs have brought me more joy, peace, and comfort. I can listen to them in any situation and find what I need. Here are the best lyrics from The Beatles for every and any occasion.

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make

The End- Abbey Road, 1969

The sun is up, the sky is blue, it's beautiful and so are you

Dear Prudence- The White Album, 1968

Love is old, love is new, love is all, love is you

Because- Abbey Road, 1969

There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be

All You Need Is Love, 1967

Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting, my friend

We Can Work It Out- Rubber Soul, 1965

He say, "I know you, you know me", One thing I can tell you is you got to be free

Come Together- Abbey Road, 1969

Oh please, say to me, You'll let me be your man. And please say to me, You'll let me hold your hand

I Wanna Hold Your Hand- Meet The Beatles!, 1964

It was twenty years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play. They've been going in and out of style, but they're guaranteed to raise a smile

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band-1967

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see

Strawberry Fields Forever- Magical Mystery Tour, 1967

Can you hear me? When it rains and shine, it's just a state of mind

Rain- Paperback Writer "B" side, 1966

Little darling, it's been long cold lonely winter. Little darling, it feels like years since it' s been here. Here comes the sun, Here comes the sun, and I say it's alright

Here Comes The Sun- Abbey Road, 1969

We danced through the night and we held each other tight, and before too long I fell in love with her. Now, I'll never dance with another when I saw her standing there

Saw Her Standing There- Please Please Me, 1963

I love you, I love you, I love you, that's all I want to say

Michelle- Rubber Soul, 1965

You say you want a revolution. Well you know, we all want to change the world

Revolution- The Beatles, 1968

All the lonely people, where do they all come from. All the lonely people, where do they all belong

Eleanor Rigby- Revolver, 1966

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends

With A Little Help From My Friends- Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967

Hey Jude, don't make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better

Hey Jude, 1968

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away. Now it looks as though they're here to stay. Oh, I believe in yesterday

Yesterday- Help!, 1965

And when the brokenhearted people, living in the world agree, there will be an answer, let it be.

Let It Be- Let It Be, 1970

And anytime you feel the pain, Hey Jude, refrain. Don't carry the world upon your shoulders

I'll give you all i got to give if you say you'll love me too. i may not have a lot to give but what i got i'll give to you. i don't care too much for money. money can't buy me love.

Can't Buy Me Love- A Hard Day's Night, 1964

All you need is love, love is all you need

All You Need Is Love- Magical Mystery Tour, 1967

Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly. all your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise.

Blackbird- The White Album, 1968

Though I know I'll never lose affection, for people and things that went before. I know I'll often stop and think about them. In my life, I love you more

In My Life- Rubber Soul, 1965

While these are my 25 favorites, there are quite literally 1000s that could have been included. The Beatles' body of work is massive and there is something for everyone. If you have been living under a rock and haven't discovered the Fab Four, you have to get musically educated. Stream them on Spotify, find them on iTunes or even buy a CD or record (Yes, those still exist!). I would suggest starting with 1, which is a collection of most of their #1 songs, or the 1968 White Album. Give them chance and you'll never look back.

14 Invisible Activities: Unleash Your Inner Ghost!

Obviously the best superpower..

The best superpower ever? Being invisible of course. Imagine just being able to go from seen to unseen on a dime. Who wouldn't want to have the opportunity to be invisible? Superman and Batman have nothing on being invisible with their superhero abilities. Here are some things that you could do while being invisible, because being invisible can benefit your social life too.

1. "Haunt" your friends.

Follow them into their house and cause a ruckus.

2. Sneak into movie theaters.

Going to the cinema alone is good for your mental health , says science

Considering that the monthly cost of subscribing to a media-streaming service like Netflix is oft...

Free movies...what else to I have to say?

3. Sneak into the pantry and grab a snack without judgment.

Late night snacks all you want? Duh.

4. Reenact "Hollow Man" and play Kevin Bacon.

America's favorite son? And feel what it's like to be in a MTV Movie Award nominated film? Sign me up.

5. Wear a mask and pretend to be a floating head.

Just another way to spook your friends in case you wanted to.

6. Hold objects so they'll "float."

"Oh no! A floating jar of peanut butter."

7. Win every game of hide-and-seek.

Just stand out in the open and you'll win.

8. Eat some food as people will watch it disappear.

Even everyday activities can be funny.

9. Go around pantsing your friends.

Even pranks can be done; not everything can be good.

10. Not have perfect attendance.

You'll say here, but they won't see you...

11. Avoid anyone you don't want to see.

Whether it's an ex or someone you hate, just use your invisibility to slip out of the situation.

12. Avoid responsibilities.

Chores? Invisible. People asking about social life? Invisible. Family being rude? Boom, invisible.

13. Be an expert on ding-dong-ditch.

Never get caught and have the adrenaline rush? I'm down.

14. Brag about being invisible.

Be the envy of the town.

But don't, I repeat, don't go in a locker room. Don't be a pervert with your power. No one likes a Peeping Tom.

Good luck, folks.

19 Lessons I'll Never Forget from Growing Up In a Small Town

There have been many lessons learned..

Small towns certainly have their pros and cons. Many people who grow up in small towns find themselves counting the days until they get to escape their roots and plant new ones in bigger, "better" places. And that's fine. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought those same thoughts before too. We all have, but they say it's important to remember where you came from. When I think about where I come from, I can't help having an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for my roots. Being from a small town has taught me so many important lessons that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

1. The importance of traditions.

Sometimes traditions seem like a silly thing, but the fact of it is that it's part of who you are. You grew up this way and, more than likely, so did your parents. It is something that is part of your family history and that is more important than anything.

2. How to be thankful for family and friends.

No matter how many times they get on your nerves or make you mad, they are the ones who will always be there and you should never take that for granted.

3. How to give back.

When tragedy strikes in a small town, everyone feels obligated to help out because, whether directly or indirectly, it affects you too. It is easy in a bigger city to be able to disconnect from certain problems. But in a small town those problems affect everyone.

4. What the word "community" really means.

Along the same lines as #3, everyone is always ready and willing to lend a helping hand when you need one in a small town and to me that is the true meaning of community. It's working together to build a better atmosphere, being there to raise each other up, build each other up, and pick each other up when someone is in need. A small town community is full of endless support whether it be after a tragedy or at a hometown sports game. Everyone shows up to show their support.

5. That it isn't about the destination, but the journey.

People say this to others all the time, but it takes on a whole new meaning in a small town. It is true that life is about the journey, but when you're from a small town, you know it's about the journey because the journey probably takes longer than you spend at the destination. Everything is so far away that it is totally normal to spend a couple hours in the car on your way to some form of entertainment. And most of the time, you're gonna have as many, if not more, memories and laughs on the journey than at the destination.

6. The consequences of making bad choices.

Word travels fast in a small town, so don't think you're gonna get away with anything. In fact, your parents probably know what you did before you even have a chance to get home and tell them. And forget about being scared of what your teacher, principle, or other authority figure is going to do, you're more afraid of what your parents are gonna do when you get home.

7. To trust people, until you have a reason not to.

Everyone deserves a chance. Most people don't have ill-intentions and you can't live your life guarding against every one else just because a few people in your life have betrayed your trust.

8. To be welcoming and accepting of everyone.

While small towns are not always extremely diverse, they do contain people with a lot of different stories, struggle, and backgrounds. In a small town, it is pretty hard to exclude anyone because of who they are or what they come from because there aren't many people to choose from. A small town teaches you that just because someone isn't the same as you, doesn't mean you can't be great friends.

9. How to be my own, individual person.

In a small town, you learn that it's okay to be who you are and do your own thing. You learn that confidence isn't how beautiful you are or how much money you have, it's who you are on the inside.

10. How to work for what I want.

Nothing comes easy in life. They always say "gardens don't grow overnight" and if you're from a small town you know this both figuratively and literally. You certainly know gardens don't grow overnight because you've worked in a garden or two. But you also know that to get to the place you want to be in life it takes work and effort. It doesn't just happen because you want it to.

11. How to be great at giving directions.

If you're from a small town, you know that you will probably only meet a handful of people in your life who ACTUALLY know where your town is. And forget about the people who accidentally enter into your town because of google maps. You've gotten really good at giving them directions right back to the interstate.

12. How to be humble .

My small town has definitely taught me how to be humble. It isn't always about you, and anyone who grows up in a small town knows that. Everyone gets their moment in the spotlight, and since there's so few of us, we're probably best friends with everyone so we are as excited when they get their moment of fame as we are when we get ours.

13. To be well-rounded.

Going to a small town high school definitely made me well-rounded. There isn't enough kids in the school to fill up all the clubs and sports teams individually so be ready to be a part of them all.

14. How to be great at conflict resolution.

In a small town, good luck holding a grudge. In a bigger city you can just avoid a person you don't like or who you've had problems with. But not in a small town. You better resolve the issue fast because you're bound to see them at least 5 times a week.

15. The beauty of getting outside and exploring.

One of my favorite things about growing up in a rural area was being able to go outside and go exploring and not have to worry about being in danger. There is nothing more exciting then finding a new place somewhere in town or in the woods and just spending time there enjoying the natural beauty around you.

16. To be prepared for anything.

You never know what may happen. If you get a flat tire, you better know how to change it yourself because you never know if you will be able to get ahold of someone else to come fix it. Mechanics might be too busy , or more than likely you won't even have enough cell service to call one.

17. That you don't always have to do it alone.

It's okay to ask for help. One thing I realized when I moved away from my town for college, was how much my town has taught me that I could ask for help is I needed it. I got into a couple situations outside of my town where I couldn't find anyone to help me and found myself thinking, if I was in my town there would be tons of people ready to help me. And even though I couldn't find anyone to help, you better believe I wasn't afraid to ask.

18. How to be creative.

When you're at least an hour away from normal forms of entertainment such as movie theaters and malls, you learn to get real creative in entertaining yourself. Whether it be a night looking at the stars in the bed of a pickup truck or having a movie marathon in a blanket fort at home, you know how to make your own good time.

19. To brush off gossip.

It's all about knowing the person you are and not letting others influence your opinion of yourself. In small towns, there is plenty of gossip. But as long as you know who you really are, it will always blow over.

Grateful Beyond Words: A Letter to My Inspiration

I have never been so thankful to know you..

I can't say "thank you" enough to express how grateful I am for you coming into my life. You have made such a huge impact on my life. I would not be the person I am today without you and I know that you will keep inspiring me to become an even better version of myself.

You have taught me that you don't always have to strong. You are allowed to break down as long as you pick yourself back up and keep moving forward. When life had you at your worst moments, you allowed your friends to be there for you and to help you. You let them in and they helped pick you up. Even in your darkest hour you showed so much strength. I know that you don't believe in yourself as much as you should but you are unbelievably strong and capable of anything you set your mind to.

Your passion to make a difference in the world is unbelievable. You put your heart and soul into your endeavors and surpass any personal goal you could have set. Watching you do what you love and watching you make a difference in the lives of others is an incredible experience. The way your face lights up when you finally realize what you have accomplished is breathtaking and I hope that one day I can have just as much passion you have.

SEE MORE: A Letter To My Best Friend On Her Birthday

The love you have for your family is outstanding. Watching you interact with loved ones just makes me smile . You are so comfortable and you are yourself. I see the way you smile when you are around family and I wish I could see you smile like this everyday. You love with all your heart and this quality is something I wished I possessed.

You inspire me to be the best version of myself. I look up to you. I feel that more people should strive to have the strength and passion that you exemplify in everyday life.You may be stubborn at points but when you really need help you let others in, which shows strength in itself. I have never been more proud to know someone and to call someone my role model. You have taught me so many things and I want to thank you. Thank you for inspiring me in life. Thank you for making me want to be a better person.

Waitlisted for a College Class? Here's What to Do!

Dealing with the inevitable realities of college life..

Course registration at college can be a big hassle and is almost never talked about. Classes you want to take fill up before you get a chance to register. You might change your mind about a class you want to take and must struggle to find another class to fit in the same time period. You also have to make sure no classes clash by time. Like I said, it's a big hassle.

This semester, I was waitlisted for two classes. Most people in this situation, especially first years, freak out because they don't know what to do. Here is what you should do when this happens.

Don't freak out

This is a rule you should continue to follow no matter what you do in life, but is especially helpful in this situation.

Email the professor

Around this time, professors are getting flooded with requests from students wanting to get into full classes. This doesn't mean you shouldn't burden them with your email; it means they are expecting interested students to email them. Send a short, concise message telling them that you are interested in the class and ask if there would be any chance for you to get in.

Attend the first class

Often, the advice professors will give you when they reply to your email is to attend the first class. The first class isn't the most important class in terms of what will be taught. However, attending the first class means you are serious about taking the course and aren't going to give up on it.

Keep attending class

Every student is in the same position as you are. They registered for more classes than they want to take and are "shopping." For the first couple of weeks, you can drop or add classes as you please, which means that classes that were once full will have spaces. If you keep attending class and keep up with assignments, odds are that you will have priority. Professors give preference to people who need the class for a major and then from higher to lower class year (senior to freshman).

Have a backup plan

For two weeks, or until I find out whether I get into my waitlisted class, I will be attending more than the usual number of classes. This is so that if I don't get into my waitlisted class, I won't have a credit shortage and I won't have to fall back in my backup class. Chances are that enough people will drop the class, especially if it is very difficult like computer science, and you will have a chance. In popular classes like art and psychology, odds are you probably won't get in, so prepare for that.

Remember that everything works out at the end

Life is full of surprises. So what if you didn't get into the class you wanted? Your life obviously has something else in store for you. It's your job to make sure you make the best out of what you have.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Punctuality — 500-Word on Being Late

500-word on Being Late

• Categories: Ethics Punctuality

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Words: 504 |

Published: Jun 24, 2024

Words: 504 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

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Essay on Being Late to School: Hurry Up with New Ideas 2024

You push the snooze button once again and finally open your eyes. It is already 8:50, and your classes start at 9. “I’m going to be late again!”— you think, already in full panic mode. In a minute, you rush out the door half-dressed, swallowing your sandwich on the go.

Does this happen to you every morning? Then, writing an essay on being late to class will be a beneficial task for you.

In the article, you’ll see how to approach writing a “being late” essay. Our custom-writing team has collected the most useful tips that will help you nail the task. Additionally, you will find here:

• topics to write about;
• examples of writing different types of essays on being late to class. 

☑️ How to Write Essays about Tardiness

• 📜 Essays on Being Late: Different Types
• 💡 Top Essay Ideas
• 🔎 References

In case you have to write an essay on being late in general, regardless of the situation, the following tips are for you. Learn how to compose a successful 500-words essay on the topic:

Step #1: Start with describing a situation when being on time is extremely important.

Let the situation be a job interview, for instance. Tell about the consequences of being late in that case. Can a person who is late for a job interview actually get a job?

Step #2: Now, you can discuss reasons for tardiness.

So, why do some people tend to be late regularly? What excuses do they usually have? Are there any scientific explanations of this phenomenon? Give answers in your essay.

Step #3: Finally, you can discuss how to manage this problem.

Introduce some basic principles of time management. Don’t forget to add your recommendations. If you’ve already had a similar issue, describe how you handled it.

If you have to write an essay about your tardiness, here’s how to apologize for being late:

📜  Different Types of Essays on Being Late: How to Write

Did you know that there are several types of essays on being late? And each type requires different structure. Sounds overwhelming, right?

Worry not: we have an explanation for every type of essay. With our advice, you can nail your paper on coming late to school!

Apology Letter for Being Late

You write an apology letter when you need to report why you were late. It’s a short, formal essay addressed to your teacher or professor. It can seem daunting at first, but it’s relatively easy to write.

• Start with your teacher’s or principal’s name. You can add “dear” if you want. Example: Dear Mrs [your teacher’s name]
• Apologize for your lateness. Be sincere and straightforward. Example: I am very sorry I missed the first part of your class today.
• Explain why you were late. Don’t make up excuses! Describe the situation as it happened. Example: I was late because I got caught up in a traffic jam.
• Say that you understand that you were wrong. Promise that you won’t be late again. Example: I understand that I should have gotten up earlier. I’ll do my best not to let this happen again.
• Ask what you can do to catch up with the material you’ve missed. Example: I will do the classwork I’ve missed. Please allow me to write the exam I’ve missed.
• Sign the letter with your name and a complimentary close. Example: Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely, [your name]

Cause and Effect Essays for Being Late

Papers on lateness are great for exploring causes and effects. In your essay, you can focus on the reasons behind tardiness and the consequences of being late.

• Select a problem that you can work with. Example: Being late for school causes a lot of stress for a student.
• State the leading cause of the problem. Example: Lateness is often caused by a lack of sleep due to stress or too much work.
• Think about the possible effects of this problem. Example: Tardiness can lead to more stress-related problems.
• Write a conclusion. You can simply sum up what you described in the essay. Example: As you can see, being late often causes additional stress.

Narrative Essay for Being Late

Writing a narrative essay is almost like telling a story. In this case, you’ll compose a short story about your absence or tardiness. Here are some tips:

• Write a clear introduction. For example, describe the day when you were late for school. Example: One day I was late for a science lesson and missed a very exciting experiment.
• Write from the first-person perspective. This is instrumental if you’re describing something that happened to you personally. Example: I want to write about an experience that taught me a lot.
• Tell the whole story! Start by describing the reasons why you were late and finish with the outcomes and the lessons learned. Example: In the end, I understood that I should manage my time better.

Reflective Essay for Being Late

A reflective paper is a lot like a narrative essay, but it’s more formal. Here you can reflect on your understanding of punctuality and talk about what influenced it.

• Start by formulating the main idea or a thesis. Example: Understanding how my actions affected other people helped me to become more punctual.
• Describe what you’ve learned through experience and how it influenced you. Example: This experience showed me that if you’re tardy, you can miss the most important events in your life.
• Don’t be afraid to show some creativity and use descriptive language in your reflective essay. Example: The realization hit me like lightning.

Argumentative Essay for Being Late

When writing about being late, you will need to convince the reader of your viewpoint by using arguments.

For example, you can choose to write about how lateness can affect academic performance:

• Formulate your topic as a question. The answer will become your thesis statement. Example: Topic: How can tardiness affect academic performance? Thesis: Students that come late to school disrupt the discipline and miss out on important information, leading to poor academic performance.
• Introduce two arguments—one for and one against your statement. Example: Tardiness negatively affects students’ academic performance, although some people think it’s an exaggeration.
• Present arguments that will persuade the reader that your point is correct and that the opposite is wrong. Example: Students who come to school late miss the first part of the discussion, which makes it hard for them to understand the lesson.

💡  Essays on Being Late: Top Ideas

In some cases, you’re allowed to select what to discuss in your paper. There are several angles to consider the topic from, and you may have trouble picking one.

Can’t decide what to write about in your essay on being late to class? Here are some ideas you can choose from with examples.

Reasons for Being Late to Class

You probably think that laziness and poor time management are the main reasons why students don’t arrive in time. For your essay on being late to school, you might also want to consider the following ideas:

• Some live too far away, and it’s difficult for them to arrive on time.
• Some have illnesses or disabilities that cause them to be late.
• Sometimes students experience too much stress and have trouble sleeping.
• Learners who are bullied at school may refuse to go back there.
• Issues with public transport may result in delays.
• Some are afraid of their teachers, or they don’t want to write tests.
• Some students want to challenge authority by breaking the rules.
• Some might have problematic parents who try to keep them at home.
• Working because of the family’s tough financial situation forces students to skip classes.
• Practicing religious rites may result in lateness to school.
• Kids can come late on purpose to show off.
• Conflicts with teachers make learners avoid attending classes.
• Caring for younger siblings may cause lateness.
• Another reason to consider for your essay is the desire to get an adrenaline rush.
• A car breaking down or a bike’s flat tire can cause learners to be unpunctual.
• Some students are not motivated to study.
• Living in a troubled neighborhood can prevent punctuality.
• Kids may fall asleep in public transport and pass their stop.
• If a child is inattentive in the morning, they may forget to get out of the house in time.
• Caring for pets before school can be a reason for students to be late.
• Some are exhausted and sleep through their alarms.
• If something around the house needs repair, students may fail to arrive at school on time.
• Going to bed late at night makes it difficult to get up in the morning.
• Forgetting their belongings at home may cause students to go back to collect them.
• An essay on being late to school might want to look at mental health problems as a cause for lateness.
• Some might be negatively influenced by their peers.
• Many students spend too much time getting ready in the morning.
• Noisy neighbors can cause sleep problems or even make one miss one’s alarm.
• Family problems often affect children’s capability to be organized and punctual.
• Many school kids like buying coffee before class and spend a lot of time in queues.
• Students might skip a class because they haven’t done their homework.
• For some people, it’s tough to keep track of time.
• Absence can be a result of caring for elders.
• Some may spend too much time preparing breakfast.
• Some students’ parents distract them instead of helping to get ready for school.

You can discuss one of these reasons in your essay about tardiness and propose what can be done:

Students who live too far away should inform their teachers beforehand that they can be late.

Lateness and Academic Performance

Alternatively, you can focus on the impacts of tardiness on studying. Explain the effects of poor attendance in an essay: write about one of the following points.

• During the first hours in the morning, students are the most attentive.
• The first few minutes of class often cover essential information.
• If you are often late, your tardiness can become chronic, which can affect your academic performance .
• Tardiness causes behavioral problems and can lead to suspension.
• Lateness makes you distracted and less attentive.
• A significant disadvantage of being late is possible conflicts with teachers.
• Students who are late have problems with keeping accurate records.
• The ability to follow the instructions is reduced in tardy learners.
• Students that often arrive late can miss out on important tests or exams.
• Lateness increases academic stress .
• Being tardy increases the school workload at home.
• One pupil’s lateness can disrupt the whole class.
• Tardiness negatively affects one’s reputation.
• Lateness usually makes learners feel disconnected from school.
• Tardiness can result in dropouts.
• Teachers often decide to keep late students out of class.

• Learners who are always late might have a harder time getting teachers’ help and support.
• At worst, chronic tardiness can delay the graduation of affected students.
• The stress that comes with being late to class can impact learners’ concentration.
• Teachers may want to check late students’ homework more thoroughly.
• Tardy pupils may be assigned extra tasks or tests.
• Tardy students may have to report to the principal.
• An instructor is less likely to grant you automatic A or other favors if you’re chronically late.
• Tardiness can start a snowball effect with many unintended adverse consequences.
• In a lesson with group projects, late teenagers disappoint their classmates.
• Chronic lateness in middle school may lead to problems in high school.
• Late students may not be admitted to exams .
• Tardy students might find it challenging to keep up with the education process.
• Tardiness decreases motivation to study .
• Some teachers punish late students by deliberately lowering their grades.
• Pupils who are not punctual are unlikely to get school awards and prizes.
• Continually tardy learners are likely to be detained after school.
• Parents might want to punish their chronically late children by making them to do additional work.
• Classmates will consider their tardy peers last when they need to select partners for group projects.

You can also discuss how tardy students affect the activity of the whole class:

Students who are late for school cause teachers to interrupt their lessons. They take other students’ attention away from the teacher and can sometimes disrupt discipline in class.

Reasons for Being Punctual

Naturally, every student needs to learn how to manage time properly . So, why not write an essay about the importance of being punctual? Here are some topic examples:

• Punctuality makes you more disciplined.
• Punctuality means not only getting to school on time but also never missing your deadlines.
• Punctual students perform better in academics.
• Punctuality makes your thoughts more precise and your mind more stable.
• Punctual students won’t get in trouble or detention due to lateness.
• Punctuality characterizes a confident person who is realistic about how long their actions take.
• If you’re always on time, you rarely miss crucial information and can learn more skills.
• Another reason why not being late is beneficial is that you can perform more tasks during the day.
• By being punctual, one shows respect for other people and oneself.
• People have more confidence in those who are always on time.
• It isn’t easy to follow one’s schedule without being punctual.
• You don’t need to apologize if you’re not late.
• Punctuality saves time and reduces stress.
• A punctual person does not have to cancel plans because of their lateness.
• For a punctual person, it’s easier to multitask.
• You are less likely to have problems with teachers or classmates.
• Punctuality is a valuable skill in all spheres of life.
• Punctuality leaves you more time to enjoy your hobbies and relax.
• Punctual students are considered reliable.
• An argumentative paper could demonstrate that there are simply no disadvantages to always being on time.
• Punctual kids don’t force teachers to interrupt lessons and have fewer conflicts with them.
• Punctual students are more organized.
• Timeliness helps students to build confidence .
• Punctuality goes hand in hand with professionalism and attention to detail.
• It’s less awkward to wait for someone than have someone else wait for you.
• Precise scheduling teaches learners how to manage time and prioritize things.
• You don’t come off as disrespectful or arrogant.
• A punctual person has their life under control.
• Punctual students worry less about making mistakes.
• Others don’t make fun of people who avoid being late.
• Punctual people are usually treated with respect.
• Punctuality helps learners build their integrity .
• Always being on time makes you more likable.
• You’re comfortable with having some downtime if you’re punctual.
• Students’ punctuality increases their self-control.

You can also try and find other reasons why being punctual is better than being tardy.

If you’re punctual, you have better relations with teachers, and you’re considered reliable.

How to Stop Being Late to School

Still haven’t found a good topic for your essay on being late to class? Try writing about how to avoid lateness!

• Calculate the best time for you to wake up, get ready, and leave the house.
• Keep track of how much time you spend on your morning routine.
• Learn to respect your teachers and fellow students.
• Think of how to reduce stress.
• Try going to bed and waking up earlier.
• Don’t be afraid to discuss your tardiness problem with teachers.
• Leave the house as early as possible.
• Set several alarms without a snooze option.
• Think of the best way to get to school beforehand.
• Invite your friends to meet somewhere and go to school together.
• Make your alarm melody louder and more energetic.
• Start to follow the same sleep schedule every day.
• Prepare everything in the evening so that you don’t have to do it before school.
• Set alarms to know when it is time to go out, eat, or do homework.
• Spend more time outside to reduce stress.
• Set your watch and clocks five or ten minutes ahead.
• Exercise more . Morning jogging is especially helpful for developing punctuality.
• Do your homework as early as possible.
• Organize your working space and make it comfortable.
• Plan your activities so that you can go to bed earlier.
• Spend less time on social networks or playing computer games .
• Remember that being late is disrespectful.
• Ask your parents to help you prepare for school quicker.
• Learn the schedule of the public transport you use.
• Avoid getting distracted on your way to school.
• Respect your own time and find ways to stay motivated.
• Remember that arriving too late often means missing out on important information.
• Don’t fall asleep on public transport on your way to school.
• Reward yourself when you arrive on time.
• If you live far from your school, find a friend who has a car and could drive you.
• Have a nutritious breakfast that can be quickly prepared.
• Check your backpack before going out to make sure you didn’t forget anything.
• Ask your parents or siblings to wake you up if you sleep through the alarm.
• Try being punctual without rushing.
• Ask your parents to avoid distracting you in the morning.
• Don’t use your smartphone while having breakfast or getting ready to leave.

You can come up with your own tips as well!

Try to keep your things organized so that you can get ready more quickly.

Excuses for Being Late

You know how excuses for being late to school can sometimes be funny and make teachers question if you’re telling the truth. Yet, there are many valid reasons for a delay, which are helpful to know. Discussing why students failed to come on time may be interesting for an essay on being late to school. For example:

• Illness verified by a parent.
• Medical appointments.
• Problems in the family.
• Extreme weather conditions.
• Participation in community events.

There are many legitimate reasons for a student’s absence. Here’s how you can write about them in your essay:

Example: Students with ADHD are usually not punished when they’re late, but they’re encouraged to be more punctual next time.

Now you know everything you need to write a perfect paper! There is one more piece of advice we want to give you. Don’t forget about the deadline for submitting your essay on being late.

And thanks for reading the article! Send it to your peers who might find it useful.

🤔  Essays on Being Late FAQ

Students are often latecomers. Coming to class on time may seem unimportant. There is usually no serious punishment, which is one of the reasons why some students are always late.

The disadvantages are numerous. A latecomer attracts the unwanted attention of the audience and provokes negative reactions. Those who are late do not make a good impression. Coming late is bad in most aspects except for a few advantages like sleeping more.

An occasional late arrival doesn’t necessarily say anything about your personality. Everyone might have some bad days when things just don’t work out well. But always coming late (or often enough) says that you are irresponsible and have poor time-management skills.

Sometimes, students are asked to write an essay after they are late to class. The topic of that essay is simple: being late. It is a means of discipline to help students understand how bad it is to arrive late.

This might be interesting for you:

• Family Values Essay: How to Write, Essay Topics & Examples
• Essay about Cars: Tips, Ideas and Best Car Topics to Write about
• Smoking Essay: Writing about Students and Teens Smoking
• Subjective Essay: Example, How to Write and Topics
• How to Write an Opinion Essay: an Ultimate Guide + Examples

🔎  References

• Solve a Teaching Problem: Students Come to Class Late: Carnegie Mellon University
• 5 Ways to Stop Being Late to All of Your Classes: Study.com
• The Impact of Tardiness on School Success: Hailey Elementary
• The Role of Personality and Agencies of Socialization in Tardiness, Absenteeism and Academic Performance: Researchgate
• Cause and Effect Essays: EAP Foundation
• Narrative Essays: Purdue University
• Reflective Writing: Plymouth University
• 4 Habits of Punctual People: Fast Company
• This Is Why You’re Always on Time: Huffpost
• Student Truancy and Lateness: OECD iLibrary
• 9 Extremely Good Reasons You Should Never Be Late Again: Inc.com
• Best and Worst Excuses for Being Late to Work: The Balance Careers
• The Advantages of Being on Time vs. Being Late to School: Seattle PI
• Never Be Late Again: 15 Tips to Guarantee You’ll Always Be on Time: Entrepreneur
• How to Deal with a Teen Who Is Late for School Every Morning: Very Well Family
• Reducing Late Arrivals: Duquesne University
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Lesson of the Day: Inspiration From The Times’s ‘It’s Never Too Late’ Series

In this lesson, students will read about people who pursued dreams later in life. Then, they will interview someone with a similar story, or make a plan to pursue a dream of their own.

By Jeremy Engle

Lesson Overview

Featured Series: “It’s Never Too Late”

Many of us dream of trying something new, but then somehow fail to get around to it. A new Times series, “It’s Never Too Late,” tells the inspiring stories of people who have decided to switch gears, change their lives and pursue their dreams.

Whether it’s playing the cello , climbing a mountain , learning to ride horseback or recording your first album, these stories are a reminder that you never know what the future holds — but you do have the power to shape it. As Vijaya Srivastava, who learned to swim at 68, put it: “Finally I decided if I don’t try, it’s never going to happen.”

In this lesson, you will learn about people who prove that you can always change your life. In a Going Further activity, you will use some of the Times’s articles as mentor texts to create your own portrait of an older person who tried something new later in their lives. Or, you can make a plan to pursue a dream of your own!

Consider the two sayings:

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

“It's never too late to be what you might have been.”

Which of these sayings do you find more accurate, more true to life?

Turn to a partner and share your thoughts. Then, discuss one or more of the following questions:

Are there certain things that are easier or harder to learn, depending on your age?

Is there anything that, in your relatively young life, you already feel it’s too late to try?

Are there any goals you have that might be better to pursue when you are older?

Article Choices:

Choose one of the articles in the “It’s Never Too Late” series to read in its entirety:

It’s Never Too Late to Fall in Love For Phyllis Raphael, 86, a chance meeting on the street turned into a get-together. Then came a date. A second and third followed. So did a love affair.

It’s Never Too Late to Record Your First Album For a celebrated architecture professor at the University of California, Berkeley, an album of 11 original songs, in a variety of genres, was eight decades in the making.

It’s Never Too Late to Follow Your Spiritual Calling After coming out as a transgender woman more than two years ago, Vica Steel never dreamed of forging a path to church leadership. Until now.

It’s Never Too Late to Climb That Mountain Dierdre Wolownick, whose son, Alex Honnold, is one of the world’s top rock climbers, ascended Yosemite’s El Capitan to celebrate her 70th birthday.

It’s Never Too Late to Publish a Debut Book and Score a Netflix Deal Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, at 50, is not the average age of a debut author. But the public school teacher describes herself as a “literary debutante” with the October publication of “My Monticello.”

Questions for Writing and Discussion

Answer the questions below based on the article you read:

1. Which article in the “It’s Never Too Late” series did you select and why? Give a short snapshot of the older person profiled in the piece, including at least two significant biographical details.

2. What was this person’s goal? What obstacles prevented them from pursuing their dream when they were younger? What finally prompted or inspired them to go for it?

3. What did they discover when they achieved their long-sought-after goal — about themselves and about life?

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Is It Really Too Late to Learn New Skills?

Among the things I have not missed since entering middle age is the sensation of being an absolute beginner. It has been decades since I’ve sat in a classroom in a gathering cloud of incomprehension (Algebra 2, tenth grade) or sincerely tried, lesson after lesson, to acquire a skill that was clearly not destined to play a large role in my life (modern dance, twelfth grade). Learning to ride a bicycle in my early thirties was an exception—a little mortifying when my husband had to run alongside the bike, as you would with a child—but ultimately rewarding. Less so was the time when a group of Japanese schoolchildren tried to teach me origami at a public event where I was the guest of honor—I’ll never forget their sombre puzzlement as my clumsy fingers mutilated yet another paper crane.

Like Tom Vanderbilt, a journalist and the author of “Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning” (Knopf), I learn new facts all the time but new skills seldom. Journalists regularly drop into unfamiliar subcultures and domains of expertise, learning enough at least to ask the right questions. The distinction he draws between his energetic stockpiling of declarative knowledge, or knowing that , and his scant attention to procedural knowledge, or knowing how , is familiar to me. The prospect of reinventing myself as, say, a late-blooming skier or ceramicist or marathon runner sparks only an idle interest, something like wondering what it might be like to live in some small town you pass on the highway.

There is certainly a way to put a positive spin on that reluctance. If you love your job and find it intellectually and creatively fulfilling, you may not feel the urge to discover other rooms in the house of your mind, whatever hidden talents and lost callings may repose there. But there are less happy forces at work, too. There’s the fear of being bad at something you think is worthwhile—and, maybe even more so, being seen to be bad at it—when you have accustomed yourself to knowing, more or less, what you’re doing. What’s the point of starting something new when you know you’ll never be much good at it? Middle age, to go by my experience—and plenty of research—brings greater emotional equanimity, an unspectacular advantage but a relief. (The lows aren’t as low, the highs not as high.) Starting all over at something would seem to put you right back into that emotional churn—exhilaration, self-doubt, but without the open-ended possibilities and renewable energy of youth. Parties mean something different and far more exciting when you’re younger and you might meet a person who will change your life; so does learning something new—it might be fun, but it’s less likely to transform your destiny at forty or fifty.

In “Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over,” Nell Painter, as distinguished a historian as they come—legions of honors, seven books, a Princeton professorship—recounts her experience earning first a B.F.A. at Rutgers and then an M.F.A. at the Rhode Island School of Design while in her sixties. As a Black woman used to feeling either uncomfortably singled out or ignored in public spaces where Black women were few, she was taken aback in art school to find that “old” was such an overwhelming signifier: “It wasn’t that I stopped being my individual self or stopped being black or stopped being female, but that old , now linked to my sex, obscured everything else beyond old lady .” Painter finds herself periodically undone by the overt discouragement of some of her teachers or the silence of her fellow-students during group crits of her work—wondering if they were “critiquing me, old-black-woman-totally-out-of-place,” or her work. Reading her book, I was full of admiration for Painter’s willingness to take herself out of a world in which her currency—scholarly accomplishment—commanded respect and put herself into a different one where that coin often went unrecognized altogether, all out of exultation in the art-making itself. But her quest also induced some anxiety in me.

Painter is no dilettante: she’s clear about not wanting to be a “Sunday Painter”; she is determined to be an Artist, and recognized as such. But “dilettante” is one of those words which deter people from taking up new pursuits as adults. Many of us are wary of being dismissed as dabblers, people who have a little too much leisure, who are a little too cute and privileged in our pastimes. This seems a narrative worth pushing back against. We might remember, as Vanderbilt points out, that the word “dilettante” comes from the Italian for “to delight.” In the eighteenth century, a group of aristocratic Englishmen popularized the term, founding the Society of the Dilettanti to undertake tours of the Continent, promote the art of knowledgeable conversation, collect art, and subsidize archeological expeditions. Frederick II of Prussia dissed the dilettanti as “lovers of the arts and sciences” who “understand them only superficially but who however are ranked in superior class to those who are totally ignorant.” (They were, of course, wealthy, with oodles of time on their hands.) The term turned more pejorative in modern times, with the rise of professions and of licensed expertise. But if you think of dilettantism as an endorsement of learning for learning’s sake—not for remuneration or career advancement but merely because it delights the mind—what’s not to love?

Maybe it could be an antidote to the self-reported perfectionism that has grown steadily more prevalent among college students in the past three decades. Thomas Curran and Andrew P. Hill, the authors of a 2019 study on perfectionism among American, British, and Canadian college students, have written that “increasingly, young people hold irrational ideals for themselves, ideals that manifest in unrealistic expectations for academic and professional achievement, how they should look, and what they should own,” and are worried that others will judge them harshly for their perceived failings. This is not, the researchers point out, good for mental health. In the U.S., we’ll be living, for the foreseeable future, in a competitive, individualistic, allegedly meritocratic society, where we can inspect and troll and post humiliating videos of one another all the live-long day. Being willing to involve yourself in something you’re mediocre at but intrinsically enjoy, to give yourself over to the imperfect pursuit of something you’d like to know how to do for no particular reason, seems like a small form of resistance.

Tom Vanderbilt got motivated to start learning again during the time he spent waiting about while his young daughter did her round of lessons and activities. Many of us have been there, “on some windowless lower level of a school huddled near an electrical outlet to keep your device alive,” as he nicely puts it—waiting, avoiding the parents who want to talk scores and rankings, trying to shoehorn a bit of work into a stranded hour or two. But not many of us are inspired to wonder, in such moments, why we ourselves aren’t in there practicing our embouchure on the trumpet or our Salchow on the ice. This may speak to my essential laziness, but I have fond memories of curling up on the child-size couch in the musty, overheated basement of our local community center reading a book for a stolen hour, while my kids took drum lessons and fencing classes. Vanderbilt, on the other hand, asks himself whether “we, in our constant chaperoning of these lessons, were imparting a subtle lesson: that learning was for the young.” Rather than molder on the sidelines, he decides to throw himself into acquiring five new skills. (That’s his term, though I started to think of these skills as “accomplishments” in the way that marriageable Jane Austen heroines have them, talents that make a long evening pass more agreeably, that can turn a person into more engaging company, for herself as much as for others.) Vanderbilt’s search is for “the naïve optimism, the hypervigilant alertness that comes with novelty and insecurity, the willingness to look foolish, and the permission to ask obvious questions—the unencumbered beginner’s mind. ” And so he tries to achieve competence, not mastery, in chess, singing, surfing, drawing, and making. (He learns to weld a wedding ring to replace two he lost surfing.) He adds juggling, not because he’s so interested in it but because—with its steep and obvious learning curve (most people, starting from scratch, can learn to juggle three balls in a few days) and its fun factor—juggling is an oft-used task for laboratory studies of how people learn. These accomplishments aren’t likely to help his job performance as a journalist, or to be marketable in any way, except insofar as the learning of them forms the idea for the book.

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Vanderbilt is good on the specific joys and embarrassments of being a late-blooming novice, or “kook,” as surfers sometimes call gauche beginners. How you think you know how to sing a song but actually know only how to sing along with one, so that, when you hear your own voice, stripped of the merciful camouflage the recorded version provides, “you’re not only hearing the song as you’ve never quite heard it, you are hearing your voice as you’ve never quite heard it.” The particular, democratic pleasure of making that voice coalesce with others’ in a choir, coupled with the way, when friends and family come to see your adult group perform, “the parental smile of eternal indulgence gives way to a more complicated expression.” The fact that feedback, especially the positive kind stressing what you’re doing right, delivered by an actual human teacher or coach watching what you do, is crucial for a beginner—which might seem obvious except that, in an age when so many instructional videos of every sort are available online, you might get lulled into thinking you could learn just as well without it. The weirdness of the phenomenon that, for many of us, our drawing skills are frozen forever as they were when we were kids. Children tend to draw better, Vanderbilt explains, when they are around five years old and rendering what they feel; later, they fall into what the psychologist Howard Gardner calls “the doldrums of literalism ”—trying to draw exactly what they see but without the technical skill or instruction that would allow them to do so effectively. Many of us never progress beyond that stage. Personally, I’m stuck at about age eight, when I filled notebooks with ungainly, scampering horses. Yet I was entranced by how both Vanderbilt and, in her far more ambitious way, Painter describe drawing as an unusually absorbing, almost meditative task—one that makes you look at the world differently even when you’re not actually doing it and pours you into undistracted flow when you are.

One problem with teaching an old dog new tricks is that certain cognitive abilities decline with age, and by “age” I mean starting as early as one’s twenties. Mental-processing speed is the big one. Maybe that’s one reason that air-traffic controllers have to retire at age fifty-six, while English professors can stay at it indefinitely. Vanderbilt cites the work of Neil Charness, a psychology professor at Florida State University, who has shown that the older a chess player is the slower she is to perceive a threatened check, no matter what her skill level. Processing speed is why I invariably lose against my daughter (pretty good-naturedly, if you ask me) at a game that I continue to play: Anomia. In this game, players flip cards bearing the names of categories (dog breeds, Olympic athletes, talk-show hosts, whatever), and, if your card displays the same small symbol as one of your opponents’ does, you try to be the first to call out something belonging to the other person’s category. If my daughter and I each had ten minutes to list as many talk-show hosts as we could, I’d probably triumph—after all, I have several decades of late-night-TV viewing over her. But, with speed the essence, a second’s lag in my response speed cooks my goose every game.

Still, as Rich Karlgaard notes in his reassuring book “Late Bloomers: The Hidden Strengths of Learning and Succeeding at Your Own Pace,” there are cognitive compensations. “Our brains are constantly forming neural networks and pattern-recognition capabilities that we didn’t have in our youth when we had blazing synaptic horsepower,” he writes. Fluid intelligence, which encompasses the capacity to suss out novel challenges and think on one’s feet, favors the young. But crystallized intelligence—the ability to draw on one’s accumulated store of knowledge, expertise, and Fingerspitzengefühl —is often enriched by advancing age. And there’s more to it than that: particular cognitive skills rise and fall at different rates across the life span, as Joshua K. Hartshorne, now a professor of psychology at Boston College, and Laura T. Germine, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, show in a 2015 paper on the subject. Processing speed peaks in the late teens, short-term memory for names at around twenty-two, short-term memory for faces at around thirty, vocabulary at around fifty (in some studies, even at around sixty-five), while social understanding, including the ability to recognize and interpret other people’s emotions, rises at around forty and tends to remain high. “Not only is there no age at which humans are performing at peak at all cognitive tasks,” Hartshorne and Germine conclude, “there may not be an age at which humans are at peak on most cognitive tasks.” This helps Karlgaard’s case that we need a “kinder clock for human development”—societal pressure on young adults to specialize and succeed right out of college is as wrongheaded and oppressive on the one end of life as patronizing attitudes toward the old are on the other.

The gift of crystallized intelligence explains why some people can bloom spectacularly when they’re older—especially, perhaps, in a field like literature, where a rich vein of life experience can be a writerly asset. Annie Proulx published her first novel at the age of fifty-six, Raymond Chandler at fifty-one. Frank McCourt, who had been a high-school teacher in New York City for much of his career, published his first book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir “Angela’s Ashes,” at sixty-six. Edith Wharton, who had been a society matron prone to neurasthenia and trapped in a gilded cage of a marriage, produced no novels until she was forty. Publishing fiction awakened her from what she described as “a kind of torpor,” a familiar feeling for the true later bloomer. “I had groped my way through to my vocation,” Wharton wrote, “and thereafter I never questioned that story-telling was my job.”

In science and technology, we often think of the people who make precocious breakthroughs as the true geniuses—Einstein developing his special theory of relativity at twenty-six. Einstein himself once said that “a person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of thirty will never do so.” A classic paper on the relationship between age and scientific creativity showed that American Nobel winners tended to have done their prize-winning work at thirty-six in physics, thirty-nine in chemistry, and forty-one in medicine—that creativity rose in the twenties and thirties and began a gradual decline in the forties.

That picture has been complicated by more recent research. According to a 2014 working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, which undertook a broad review of the research on age and scientific breakthroughs, the average age at which people make significant contributions to science has been rising during the twentieth century—notably to forty-eight, for physicists. (One explanation might be that the “burden of knowledge” that people have to take on in many scientific disciplines has increased.) Meanwhile, a 2016 paper in Science that considered a wider range of scientists than Nobelists concluded that “the highest-impact work in a scientist’s career is randomly distributed within her body of work. That is, the highest-impact work can be, with the same probability, anywhere in the sequence of papers published by a scientist—it could be the first publication, could appear mid-career, or could be a scientist’s last publication.”

When it comes to more garden-variety late blooming, the kind of new competencies that Vanderbilt is seeking, he seems to have gone about it in the most promising way. For one thing, it appears that people may learn better when they are learning multiple skills at once, as Vanderbilt did. A recent study that looked at the experiences of adults over fifty-five who learned three new skills at once—for example, Spanish, drawing, and music composition—found that they not only acquired proficiency in these areas but improved their cognitive functioning over all, including working and episodic memory. In a 2017 paper, Rachel Wu, a neuroscientist at U.C. Riverside, and her co-authors, George W. Rebok and Feng Vankee Lin, propose six factors that they think are needed to sustain cognitive development, factors that tend to be less present in people’s lives as they enter young adulthood and certainly as they grow old. These include what the Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck calls a “growth mindset,” the belief that abilities are not fixed but can improve with effort; a commitment to serious rather than “hobby learning” (in which “the learner casually picks up skills for a short period and then quits due to difficulty, disinterest, or other time commitments”); a forgiving environment that promotes what Dweck calls a “not yet” rather than a “cannot” approach; and a habit of learning multiple skills simultaneously, which may help by encouraging the application of capacities acquired in one domain to another. What these elements have in common, Wu and her co-authors point out, is that they tend to replicate how children learn.

So eager have I been all my life to leave behind the subjects I was bad at and hunker down with the ones I was good at—a balm in many ways—that, until reading these books, I’d sort of forgotten the youthful pleasure of moving our little tokens ahead on a bunch of winding pathways of aptitude, lagging behind here, surging ahead there. I’d been out of touch with that sense of life as something that might encompass multiple possibilities for skill and artistry. But now I’ve been thinking about taking up singing in a serious way again, learning some of the jazz standards my mom, a professional singer, used to croon to me at bedtime. If learning like a child sounds a little airy-fairy, whatever the neuroscience research says, try recalling what it felt like to learn how to do something new when you didn’t really care what your performance of it said about your place in the world, when you didn’t know what you didn’t know. It might feel like a whole new beginning. ♦

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Assignments: better late than never?

A few days ago, a colleague came to me for teaching advice. On his syllabus, he had written that he did not accept late assignments. One of the students, a young woman who was struggling in the class, had turned in a paper that was woefully incomplete and he told her that it did not meet the assignment requirements. However, rather than rejecting it outright, he took account of her struggles and accepted that she hadn’t decided to order essay online cheap to get it finished, telling her that if she turned in a finished version by the end of the week that completely met the basic requirements of the assignment, he would give her partial credit. At the end of the week, she turned the paper in again, but it was still well short of what he would accept as meeting minimal requirements.

Get that assignment in on time or else!

He asked what I thought he should do. He told me that the assignment counted 15% of her grade, and thus giving her a zero on the assignment would immediately knock her down at least a grade and a half, before taking account of her other less-than-stellar work in the course. But, because he had announced that he didn’t accept late papers and then had recanted on that rule by inviting her to submit a revised version, he felt he had to give her some credit.

After suggesting that yes, it made sense to give her some credit, under the circumstances, I went on to make a more general point about putting strict rules and regulations in a syllabus. At least this way, it would be printed for all the world to see, and nothing beats having it in a hard copy when you want to make a point. An old colleague of mine, who loved using a syllabus for his classes, told me that I should consider using a printing service like Printivity to display all of the information when it came to the year and what the students would be expecting. It’s one of the only ways to make sure that they have been sent a clear message. So, I should definitely consider putting rules and regulations in this type of format. I reminded him that in my syllabi, I never say that I will not accept late assignments. I have no list of punishments or points that will be taken off if assignments are turned in late. My friend, Joe Lowman, and I have had many conversations about this & I’ve benefited greatly from his wisdom. Indeed, when it comes to such matters, I usually find myself asking, “what would Joe do?”

On the first day of class, students often ask me, what are your penalties for late assignments? I tell them I don’t expect late assignments, as all the due dates for assignments are in the syllabus they’ve just been handed. In that case, why would any assignments be late? I find this logic impeccable, but some aren’t satisfied with this answer and persist in questioning me. All I will say is that if they find themselves having difficulty, prior to an assignment being due, they need to talk with me and I will try to help them. I never speculate about what I might do with the late assignment, preferring to deal with each of them on its own merits.

I do this to avoid being put in the situation of my colleague: announcing a hard and fast rule which extenuating circumstances may well require me to break. Over my 45 years of teaching, I have heard about plenty of emergencies, some of which were devastating to the students involved. What would I do if a student told me about a family emergency which gave them no choice but to rush home? I would feel really heartless in telling a student that I was very sorry about the accident and I hoped the victims would recover, but I stood firmly by my policy.

My colleagues are typically astonished when I tell them about this policy. Typically, they raise two objections. First, won’t I get a lot of late assignments? Second, if I do accept late assignments, isn’t that unfair to the students who turn their assignments on time? My answer is “no” to both objections, as I will explain.

First , in my syllabus and on my webpage, every assignment is clearly described with its due date. I use Sakai, which sends out automated notices, reminding students of due dates. The assignment is also noted on the website’s course calendar. For larger assignments, such as term papers, I have multiple milestones that students must meet: reporting their chosen topic, submitting a one paragraph description of their theme, a preliminary listing of references, a rough draft, and so forth. These milestones give me many opportunities to intervene when students show signs of falling behind. I also take a very active role in keeping track of how students are doing, sending emails to students who miss class and asking students to come in and talk with me about assignments, if they have difficulties.

When students approach me about the possibility of a late assignment, and what I would do, the first thing I always say is, “What is interfering with your turning in an assignment on time?” I don’t say, “Remember the penalties.” If, after working with them, it is clear that they will not get the assignment in on time, the next conversation I have with them goes something like this:

Student: “okay, when can I turn the paper in?”

Me: “when do you think you will have it finished?”

Student: “well, will I be penalized?”

Me: “you realize that the reason I ask for assignments to be turned in on time is so I have enough time to read them properly, so I can be sure that I will give each assignment its proper due. Late assignments make that more difficult. However, I will grade it as fairly as I can.”

Student: “okay, I’ll turn it in on Monday.” [ Students almost always pick a date earlier than I would have chosen, if I had picked the date! ]

Cooperative learning means you’re always coming up roses!

One of the consequences of this approach is that I almost never get late assignments! And, my syllabus is not cluttered up with pointless draconian rules that I have no intention of enforcing.

Second , what about the “fairness” issue? Isn’t it unfair to the conscientious students, who get their work in on time, to allow some students to turn assignments in late? I have three responses to this alleged violation of some perceived moral principle. (In what philosophical system is taking account of extenuating circumstances equivalent to a moral failure?)

(1) for students having problems getting assignments in on time, extra time almost never makes a difference in the quality of what they do. The best students in a class are not the ones asking for extensions.

(2) students who get assignments in on time can put that assignment behind them and get on with their lives. By contrast, students who are struggling to complete a late assignment will find they have to forgo other things that they would’ve enjoyed doing, with their assignment-free peers, but instead they are stuck indoors, completing an assignment. Being allowed to turn something in late is no free pass to scholastic heaven. It is a burden.

(3) my goal in assessing my student’s work is to try to figure out what they have learned in my class, and knocking off points from a student’s score because a paper was a day or two late completely muddies the meaning of a grade. I’m not teaching “discipline,” I’m teaching sociology. I want to give students every opportunity to show me what they’ve learned, and if this requires me, every few semesters, to accept a late assignment, I’m quite willing to do so.

Interested in learning more about what to do about late assignments? See this post.

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42 thoughts on “ assignments: better late than never ”.

I’ve been teaching at four-year colleges in the New York area for more than 20 years. I tell students they may hand in assignments late, but if they do, I may not read them and I may not grade them. I tell students I will only possibly read and grade late assignments if I feel I need them to assign a final grade to the student. I don’t believe in “penalizing” a student by downgrading a late assignment….I believe an “A” paper is an “A” paper whether it’s handed in on time or a month late. The opposite is like saying a grilled bronzino with vegetables is “worth” !8.00 if served during the “early-bird” time, but it’s worth 28.00 if served after. Makes no sense!

More accurately, it’s like not having my bronzino served after waiting at the table for an hour, at which point I would leave, taking my appetite and my money to another restaurant. After enough tardy bronzinos, that restaurant would struggle to stay in business.

John, I wonder if that’s the right analogy. Are instructors the ‘customers’ who are waiting for a tasty dish we order but has been prepared by someone else? Maybe George should have used a less fragile example — a cold sandwich? But I guess you’d still want it when you were hungry. However, here is where the analogy really breaks down. As instructors, we’re co-producers of the assignment b/c we provided the initial resources, including the recipe, and the prep instructions. We’re not just sitting back & waiting for 3rd parties we don’t know to serve us. We’re much more actively involved. Thanks for the thought-provoking comment!

That sounds so logical. I still got penalised as a student, for missing the deadline because I was horribly sick from chemotherapy and brain surgery. Lol teacher did not want to be unfair to other students… well, get brain cancer first and then let’s talk about fair.

I wanted to submit my final essay at school today which is going to be due in 2 business day.however the whole campus is claused because of thinks giving. I didn’t know that the campus would be claused the day after thanksgiving and all my documents are saved on the campus’s computers. Is there any way to help me out ?

In planning ahead, think of this motto: “something is either early or it’s late.” No such thing as “on time.” If you plan your life as if you can always submit stuff “on time,” bad stuff will happen, sooner or later. In this case, you’ll have to throw yourself on the mercy of your instructor, claiming ignorance of school policy. Good luck.

My attitude toward late penalties has changed considerably since I first started teaching nearly 20 years ago. After taking some workshops on learner diversity and First Peoples Principles of Learning ( http://www.fnesc.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/PUB-LFP-POSTER-Principles-of-Learning-First-Peoples-poster-11×17.pdf ), this last semester I finally eliminated all mention of late penalties from my syllabi. I wanted to see what would happen. And you know what happened? Exactly what you described! I’m done with late penalties.

Thank you for articulating all this so well in your post.

Melinda, I’m so glad to hear this! Thanks for having the courage to drop the late penalty clause. Glad to hear it made no difference.

what about? Learning involves recognizing the consequences of one’s actions. ( http://www.fnesc.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/PUB-LFP-POSTER-Principles-of-Learning-First-Peoples-poster-11×17.pdf ),

It is true that people must learn that their actions have consequences, but that is a very generic kind of learning. People must also learn to recognize the contingencies that affect the conditions under which they apply one rule rather than another. For instructors, I would say that “actions have consequences” is something that parents should teach their children, rather than waiting until the kids get to college. By then, they know that general rule. What instructors need to consider are the conditions under which a harsh penalty is appropriate & when it is not.

I think many students (like myself) face appropriate consequences as the panic over their late assignments. I know that asking for an extension is always my last resort, regardless of the course policy on late work.

I’m working on my masters degree, I’m a family nurse practitioner student. One of my classmates and I turned our papers about 20-30 minutes after deadline (midnight). I simply thought that my instructor is not going to read this paper at midnight anyway and my classmate couldn’t do it because her computer was updating. We both got zeros on our papers. I want to talk to my instructor about giving us at least some credit, but I don’t know how I can convince her. I would appreciate an advice from you.

Yulia, sorry to hear of your troubles. First and most important: what is your instructors stated policy? Was it written in the syllabus that late papers were not accepted? If that is the case, then your instructor will argue that you knew the rules and she can’t make an exception. That’s when you can use the arguments that I raise in my blog post. Second, if there was no stated policy, then I think you have a stronger case for at least having the instructor accept the paper and grade it and then perhaps deduct something from the grade because it was “late.” There’s a big difference between getting a zero on a paper and a C or even a B.in the case of no stated policy, I would make the argument that you did the assignment and the instructor should grade it, for otherwise you’re in the same boat as somebody who didn’t do the assignment at all. That doesn’t seem fair. Third, you could send the link for my blog post to your instructor, to give them advance warning of the argument you will make.

Here is an excellent post on getting rid of late assignment penalties from Tom Schimmer: “Enough with the Late Penalties.” https://tomschimmer.com/2011/02/21/enough-with-the-late-penalties/

I read your article with great interest, but from my experience, I must disagree with a lot of your points.

I teach college English composition courses. My syllabus is ironclad and I thoroughly cover everything in the syllabus on the first day of the semester. I don’t accept late work unless there is a death in the family, or they have a medical reason for missing class. Students are required to upload their assignments via Sakai. They are always given a fair amount of time for each writing assignment, so they’re never rushed to finish a project.

I don’t budge on not taking late work for several reasons. Deadlines are deadlines. Students are supposed to learn the responsibility of becoming an adult and part of that is getting tasks done on time. Punctuality shows initiative, and what so many fail to teach students at the college level these days is time management. Yes, being a college student is a major adjustment. It’s a balancing act. They need to learn how to schedule the proper amount of time for each project. Most don’t. We should not reward procrastination, which is what most students minor in. =)

Deadlines are important in the real world. To apply for graduate school, a student must submit an application on time, as well as get letters of recommendation, apply for grants, etc. After graduation, the same holds true. If submitting an application for a particular job is expected by a certain date, the student needs to realize that the “day after” is too late. Often, for employers, they are looking for future workers who are punctual and have the ability to get their work done by the deadline.

Allowing a student X number of days beyond the deadline is unfair to those who did their work on time. What’s the point of even giving a due date, if it’s going to be dismissed afterwards? I’ve also discovered that students hold a higher level of respect for the instructors/professors who set standards and keep them.

Point 2, you state: “By contrast, students who are struggling to complete a late assignment will find they have to forgo other things that they would’ve enjoyed doing, with their assignment-free peers, but instead they are stuck indoors, completing an assignment.” Most students I have are never ‘assignment-free peers’. They start working on another assignment. The ones who turned their work in on time had to forgo other things they would’ve enjoyed, and from my experience, the ‘struggling’ students forwent doing their assignments by doing something they enjoyed instead. Procrastination is commonplace, and cellphone addiction is a conversation for another day. Sadly, the distractions prevent students from focusing on the more important objectives.

Again, I enjoyed reading your article and your view. Very enlightening to see a different perspective. For me, it would never work. Keep up the great work!

Sam, thank you for your thoughtful disagreement with my points. Your comments reminded me that I probably didn’t put enough context into my argument so that him readers could see the setting in which I was able to use these techniques.

My policy regarding late assignments is not a stand-alone policy, divorced from the overall framework in which the course is organized. The course is embedded in a much bigger philosophy of teaching and learning that enables me to use this specific policy, along with many others. The larger perspective can be glimpsed, I think, by looking at my other blog posts and the many papers and postings I’ve made on teaching and learning over the past decades. (See my “Teaching Resources” webpage.)

The first thing to note is that I get almost no requests for permission to turn in assignments late. From day one, I behave as if I don’t expect late assignments and I emphasize ways in which students can complete their assignments on time. (For those sociologists reading this, I truly believe in the “social construction of reality.”) If, early in the semester a question ever does come up about late assignments – – which is extremely rare – – my reaction always is to say that the course is organized so as to make it possible for people to do their work on time. I ask people to let me know as soon as possible if they are having difficulties and to come and see me. If students persist and ask “yes, but what penalties will I get if I’m late?” I just reply, in mock surprise, “Are you aware today that you’ll be late for something a month or two from now?” And then, in so many words, I tell them that will cross that bridge when we come to it. And the path almost all students follow hardly ever takes them across that bridge.

Second, my now retired colleague, Joe Lowman, who wrote a very good book on college teaching(Mastering the Techniques of Teaching), used the same policy during his 40 years of teaching in the Psychology Department here, and with the same results that I have experienced.

Third, you make an excellent point regarding students needing to learn about deadlines and time management, and I spend time on that in class. My syllabus and calendar, on Sakai, are structured to emphasize punctuality and timeliness. For example, see my blog post on using small wins in creating milestones for students.

Fourth, I take the deadlines extremely seriously, which is why I spend so much time creating milestones to make certain that students will be prepared to meet the deadlines.

Fifth, in almost 50 years of teaching, I don’t recall a student ever saying to me that they felt cheated or treated unfairly because another student received a little extra time to complete an assignment. (Recall again that in my classes, I almost never get late assignments, and so this may not be a very fair test.) I try to build a culture of trust in which I hope students assume that I will use my discretion in a just way.

Six, I wholeheartedly agree with you regarding cell phone addiction and the presence of other distractions in the lives of our undergraduates. I wish I had an answer to that question! I can tell you that I don’t allow cell phone use or laptop use in my classes. Students keep them off unless I direct them to be turned on for use in classroom assignments. Some students even seem relieved to be unburdened of that distraction for 50 or 75 minutes!

Thanks again for your thoughtful comments and for an alternative perspective on my proposals.

Repeat on of the learning principles Learning involves recognizing the consequences of one’s actions. When you create an assignment and you establish a deadline to complete the assignment, what is the consequence for not doing it on time? What if that student that has been trained that late papers are just fine becomes a doctor and it is late for an important surgery of your family member? What if that student that has been trained that late papers are just fine, is late in one maneuver and crashes the airplane with you inside or your family members? There are cases that are exceptional cases in which late assignments can be accepted without penalty, but to make that a rule is dangerous.

Actually, nothing I do is ever strictly rule-governed. Life is full of too many contingencies! Instructors have a huge amount of power over their students & they need to learn to exercise it in a nuanced & humane way.

I think even the laziest college students who truly take advantage of their ability to submit late work are capable of understanding that life and death scenarios should be treated more urgently than an essay.

Dear Anna: thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. Yes, I agree: students are adults & should be allowed to weigh the life consequences of their decisions without being burdened by rigid rules.

In my experience, the working world, especially people working for the government, was comprised of painfully mediocre people whose best talent was being on time for everything.

Kimberly, not sure how to reply. Are you saying that some people are so obsessed with being on time that they neglect more important things?

Awesome read. Thank you for sharing.

I am in arts university as a sculptor major and nearly every assignment I have handed in to date has been late. I feel absolutely sick about it because I am here to do my best – it is not my first time at university and I take it very seriously. It makes me wonder if this is my best and if so, how can I ever succeed in life? Most of my profs are accommodating because I have a documented learning disability, I am respectful of them and do my best to take risks, utilize their feedback and submit the best piece of work I can. Others seem to think I think I’m too special to hand things in on time like everyone else. I guess my question is… If I would have failed without the willingness of my profs to accept late work thus far, is this then a message to me that I shouldn’t be here? What’s your stance on students who chronically fail to meet deadlines despite working flat out to meet them? Where do they belong? Any advice?

The same kinds of people who are accommmodating you in college will be there, in the world beyond college, and you should expect the same from them. Every person must find their niche in the world, or carve one out, and you are not more or less “special” than anyone else. I would say that if you feel you belong, you belong. It sounds like you have many people who see you as someone they want to work with & see succeed.

Just a lurker reading your compassionate response, and it honestly moved me to tears. I am a BScN nursing student, three quarters of the way through my degree, and working at full scope as an ESN. I have a previous degree in psychology, and completed IB in highschool at age 16. I have a struggled with late assignments throughout my academic career and I believe I probably will for the rest of my life when it comes to handing in written work. I, too, have a diagnosed learning disability as well as chronic health challenges that plague me. I suffer from PTSD, I struggle financially (I survive off of Canada’s student loan program), and many of my friends and family are dead. For those reasons I miss half of my lectures and I do much of my learning on my own through textbooks and recorded lectures from other universities. I am a gifted student, I can at least recognize that now, and my papers and exams are always in the 90s despite my poor attendance (though now I’m in a highly competitive program they’re more often in the 80s). I know that I am a passionate learner with a lot to offer in the real world and my clinical work with patients is impeccable. However, I don’t think I’ve handed a paper/assignment in on time once this entire program. I lose an average of 15% per course based solely on missed deadlines despite my genuine grades being quite high. I believe that’s fair, because it speaks to my weaknesses overall. But what you said about “if you feel you belong, then you belong” really struck a chord with me. I’ve always felt like a black sheep among impossibly functional academic elites. It took me so many years to recognize my strengths for what they were and to be able to envision a future for myself where I could meaningfully contribute to society. It’s professors like you, who saw beyond my organizational difficulties and gave me opportunities to really shine and showcase my talents, that have allowed me to grow with confidence into the competent professional that I feel I am now. Thank you so, so much!

Alexandra, thanks so much for taking the time to write such a full response! I appreciate your affirmation of the approach I suggested. Good luck in your chosen profession.

I stumbled here as a student feeling discouraged about failing to complete an assignment on time — again. I chronically rely on the mercy of professors. As a person who is eager to learn, does the reading, shows up every day and pays careful attention, I appreciate what your philosophy. I can attest that pushing to get work done while knowing most others were able to complete it on time does not feel like a “free pass.” It feels terrible.

I can’t help posting a response to the comments regarding teaching students about the “real world.” I am 35, with 18 years behind me as a punctual and hardworking employee. Students are not employees, and we come to college with different levels of preparation and difficulties to overcome. And unlike a job, when I fall behind in school the only person who suffers is me.

This week I blew it on two papers (after spending far too much time struggling with the first one, I had little time left for the second). I was granted an extension on the first, and turned in an excellent (per the professor) paper three days late. For the second, I obeyed the strict policy in the syllabus and turned in a dreadfully incomplete paper after a desperate all-nighter. My grade is likely destroyed, and I feel humiliated and dejected.

As a grown-up, I know I am responsible for running out of time. I accept the consequences, but I don’t feel I or anyone else gained anything by them.

Jess, your last sentence points to what I see as the hollow reasoning behind penalizing late papers: what lesson is being taught? Who benefits from the penalty? Surely not other students, as they have never told me that my accepting “late” papers is unfair.

Same boat as you. I am now 37 in a masters program. Would be an A+ student in my undergrad except for handing things in late. But I am still doing it. Been in therapy for over 10 years. Working through my issues but it isn’t easy and it just feels so shitty to be asking for professors mercy constantly. The author really has it correct when he describes the burden of being a late submitter.

I am another student in their 30’s, returning to work after over a decade in the “real world”. One of the biggest issues I’ve seen is that professors assume the worst of their students while also relying on them to support their ego.

As an adult, I have real world issues that sometimes need to be prioritized over my assignments because I am simply not the most important thing in my world and sometimes need to show up for other people. Despite my best efforts I do sometimes turn in assignments late or miss class. The few times I’ve tried to explain, professors stop me three sentences in and say “I don’t want to get involved”. I realized very quickly that they were expecting something silly and became very uncomfortable with basic, grown up issues that all adults should feel comfortable discussing.

By only offering flexibility with explanations, the professor holds all the power and can quickly close the lines of communication. I have had to accept zeros on exams and labs despite previous notice of a court summons (not even for something my fault!), and I’ve accepted that even though I’ve never gotten lower than a 93 on an exam, show up to class on time, and complete most assignments on time, I am simply not trusted as a competent adult by all of my professors.

The culture of mistrust towards undergraduates needs to stop. The slippery slopes in the comments above simply aren’t true, and having come from the “real world” into academia, I can now see very clearly why my younger colleagues would often sit on tasks and not communicate if there was an issue or question. If I had gone to college first, I likely would have picked up the same work habits!

The truth is, the strict deadline clauses do not promote personal growth and is an exercise of power, not a lesson in accountability. The real world is harsh, but it is significantly more forgiving than academia.

Hi “Greenstick”! Thanks for yet another example of the absurdity of rigid rules regarding “late” assignments. Instructors can grow into better humans if they learn to recognize the importance of students as individuals, not as “the student who must follow the rules regardless.”

Thanks for taking the time to comment. I look forward to seeing more from you.

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And students should question it. We are not in class or attend school to only accept the status quo or not ask why – or what comes at us. We are to question and question some more. The “no late assignment rule” is inhumane and ableist.

Dear Gregory: Thanks for your note. Good point: question authority was what I was taught, back in the 1960s, and that is still a good motto to live by! Your point about the no late assignment rule being abelist is also well taken.

I’m generally a good student with decent grades, but sometimes (esp in the end of the semester when there’s 3 to 4 deadlines a week) I just get so burnt out and can’t write a word even I have a detailed outline ready. I hand in stuff late for perhaps 1 or 2 times and feel terrible about that because I tried my best but its not enough. It’s true that punishing student harshly for late submission won’t encourage punctuality. It would only make me feel worse and less motivated to hand in higher quality work. I would probably just submit whatever incomplete draft I happen to have next time after receiving a deduction in grade for late work.

Izzy, thanks for pointing out the emotional costs of penalties. I’m curious to learn: when you notice that you’ve going to be late, do you approach your instructor & explain the situation? Many instructors don’t realize the issues students are facing & are surprised when they learn about them. Sometimes, it is just a matter of opening up to your instructor & explaining what’s happening. You may not have to “request” an extension” — they may simply offer it to you. Try it!

It has been fascinating and educational to read your post and the thoughtful and divergent responses. I have a similar policy for substantial assignments — like papers and projects. However, I have a different type of assignment that I am dealing with now. One (though not the only) goal of this type of assignment is to ensure that students have done the reading and thought about it before class discussion. (The course is a freshman seminar that is a general education requirement.) In this case, not handing the assignment in on time means not being prepared for class, so it matters beyond the quality of the work or the individual student. To clarify, these are small, but not inconsequential, assignments that range from selecting quotations from the reading and posing questions about the reading to writing a first-attempt analysis of a quotation from the reading (~300 words). I would be interested to know how you or others treat this type of assignment.

What are your thoughts on someone who has a medical issue who asks the prof for extra time and it is granted and then loses points for the late submission – though this was never articulated and she tells the rest of the class they may submit late?

I would say that you should first find out what her reasons were, if any, and if you find them unsatisfactory, take the issue to the department chair & then to the Dean, if need be. If an instructor is going to impose a late penalty, that should be clear from the outset. It is unfair to give someone extra time & then penalize them for accepting the offer.

I’m on year three of teaching an online course for graduate students, most of whom are working as well. I originally used the same late assignment policy as the ground version of the course, which was No Late Assignments Accepted. Last year, I had multiple students with emergencies who reached out to me. Of course, I wanted to be compassionate and ended up accepting late assignments.

I’m updating my syllabus right now and found your post while searching for examples flexible due date policies. After reading your post, I’m thinking of just simplifying my late assignment policy to “due dates are posted. Contact me as soon as possible if there’s an issue.” Even with some version of flexible due dates, there’s still going to be emergencies and some students will ask, but others won’t think to do so and will just not turn in assignment or drop the course, and that doesn’t help anyone.

I’m going to think on this a bit more. Thank you for this perspective.

I like your new, simpler statement about assignments. You’re right: the ‘smart’ students ask about what to do if they can’t meet a date, but others just try to power through or don’t do the assignment. So, your new policy is a big improvement.

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It’s Never Too Late To Start Over

It’s never too late to start over. To hit the pause button. Breathe. Then begin again.

You don’t need to lose yourself in the shuffle, get caught up in your mistakes and your fears and your anxieties. You don’t have to hold onto your anger or your sadness and carry it with you in a little jar. You are more than a little jar, waiting to be filled by unsatisfying things—material things, superficial love, addictions and vices and so many other negatives that leave you feeling emptier than before. You are more than that little jar you feel defines the person you are, so much so that you try to fit yourself in its glass walls, try to keep contained within the edges and not overflow.

Life is imperfect. It’s beautiful and complicated and burdensome and messy. And you are a part of it, a part that grows and changes and laughs and loves and gets broken and comes back together. But there will never be a time when you can’t just step back and start all over.

There is no rewind, but you can always restart, let go. Let go of the toxic friends, of the urge to gossip, of the anxieties over what he said and she said, of the worry you feel over a future you cannot control. Let go. It’s never too late to put down that jar you’re carrying and pull yourself out of it. Grab your legs and arms and brain and heart and soul and reconstruct them back into the self you’re supposed to be. Reshape. Remold. Reconnect. And begin again.

You are not supposed to be this static person, this person you’ve always been and always will be. The world is continually shifting, and you are continually moving within it, in whatever direction you want. If you don’t like that direction, turn. Don’t turn back. Don’t turn around. Just turn. Right. Left. Diagonal. Cut across the grass. Take a back road.

It’s never too late to spin things around for the better. To leave what’s been broken and acknowledge that you can’t put it back together exactly how it was. To smile at the things you cannot replace, cannot fix, cannot make perfect. Nothing is perfect. You are not perfect. So don’t drag around that little jar, the transparent jar of your imperfections for the world to see, for you to see as a constant reminder of the ways you’ve failed. Forget the jar. Forget how you’ve always been defined by it and define yourself by something new. Throw it down. Shatter it. Watch it fall and break and crush into a thousand tiny pieces and celebrate that change hurts, and that growth sucks. But now you are free falling, and it is terrifying, but terribly freeing.

Read more Self-Improvement .

About the author

Marisa Donnelly

Marisa is a writer, poet, & editor. She is the author of Somewhere On A Highway , a poetry collection on self-discovery, growth, love, loss and the challenges of becoming.

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It was too late for tears essay 250 words

it was too late for tears essay 250 words

It was too late for tears essay (250 words)

The essay titled “It was too late for tears” is a thought-provoking and emotionally charged piece of writing. With a limited word count of 250 words, it requires conciseness and a focus on key points to effectively convey its message. Let’s delve into the elements that make this essay compelling.

Emotional Impact : The essay aims to evoke strong emotions in readers, exploring themes such as regret, loss, and the passing of time. Through vivid descriptions, poignant storytelling, and powerful language, it engages the reader on an emotional level.

Narrative Structure : The essay likely follows a narrative structure, taking the reader on a journey with well-developed characters and a captivating plot. It may include a conflict or dilemma that drives the story forward, leading to a poignant resolution or realization.

Symbolism and Imagery : To enhance its impact, the essay may employ symbolism and vivid imagery. These literary devices can create a deeper connection with the reader, allowing them to visualize the scenes and emotions described.

Themes and Messages : “It was too late for tears” could explore various themes such as the fleeting nature of time, the consequences of missed opportunities, or the importance of cherishing moments while they last. The essay may also convey a moral or lesson about living life to the fullest and embracing the present.

Word Choice and Impactful Language : With a restricted word count, every word matters. The essay’s author will carefully select each word to ensure maximum impact and efficiency in conveying the intended emotions and messages. Attention to poetic language, metaphors, and vivid descriptions can create a lasting impression on the reader.

In conclusion, “It was too late for tears” is a compelling essay that aims to evoke strong emotions within a limited word count. Through its emotional impact, narrative structure, symbolism, and choice of words, it leaves a lasting impression on the reader, urging them to reflect on the profound themes explored in the essay.

To Late or Too Late? Grammar Explained With 10+ Examples

Understanding the difference between “to” and “too” in sentence structures in English can make for a tricky feat. However, once you understand the basic principles behind it and how it should work from this article, we’re sure you’ll have no problem getting it right. Let’s look at whether it’s to late or too late.

Should I Use To Late Or Too Late?

The correct spelling is “too late” when you want to talk about somebody or something being ineffective because it arrived after the time it was necessary. To say something is late means that it doesn’t arrive on time. We use “too” to add emphasis to the timing, as “too” is a modifier that stresses time words in this sense. “To late” is grammatically incorrect, and you should never use it.

It’s a common mistake that people make when they’re learning. Even some native speakers still get it wrong when they’re typing, too. It’s easy to get away with in spoken English, but the errors become apparent in written English. We’ve touched on why we use “too” instead of “to” in this case, but let’s elaborate slightly.

“Late” is a time modifier word. We use it to say that somebody or something hasn’t arrived on time. “Too” is an adverb that we use to stress specific words, adjectives, and verbs. When we use “too” and a word, we’re insinuating that the word has been emphasized, meaning it’s gotten worse. Someone or something “too late” is well past the designated time it was supposed to arrive.

“To” is a preposition used to express motion or a changing state. In this case, we do not need “to” before “late” because it won’t make any sense.

10 Examples Of “To Late” And “Too Late”

We’ve explained all the important points you need to know about the difference. Now it’s time to look through some examples of how you should use the correct version (and some incorrect variations so you see how it shouldn’t look). Hopefully, when you familiarize yourself with the incorrect sentences, you’ll start to associate the “to” as the incorrect variation, and you won’t end up making the mistakes later on.

Correct:We arrived too late at the venue.

Incorrect:They were to late to make a difference.

Correct:You’re too late . The damage is already done.

Incorrect:I was to late to help the poor person.

Correct:The school closes too late .

Incorrect:I work to late , so I don’t have any free time.

Correct:It’s too late to apologize.

Incorrect:It’s never to late.

Correct:She is too late to make any noticeable difference.

Incorrect:You’re to late to change this.

You’ll see in each of these sentences how you should use the correct variation “too late.” Every time we’re writing about it, we’re adding emphasis to “late” to show that the event has already passed and the person’s arrival in the context would have no impact on the outcome whatsoever. Every time we wrote “to late,” we deliberately used it wrong to show you how it shouldn’t look.

Is It Ever Correct To Use “To Late”?

Sometimes, some exceptions can be present when we get the idea wrong behind certain words and phrases like to late or too late. However, in the case of “to late,” this isn’t true. If we look a little closer at the phrase in question, we’ll start to understand why. Usually, when we use “to” as a preposition before a word, it’s because we’re going to include a verb directly after it. Something like “to see” or “to do” is a perfect example of this.

However, “late” isn’t a verb. “Late” is used in this context as an adjective, meaning that someone or something has arrived late. Since we’re not using a verb, we can’t use “to” before it. It just doesn’t have any grammatical use. Even if we were to take “late” in another context, where it’s not an adjective, it’s still used as an adverb. Something like “I arrived late” or “my late mother” are good examples of adverbs in this way.

Because of this adverb or adjective usage, you will never see “to late” used in writing. You won’t even see native speakers using it as a lazy rule or a way to say “too late” quicker. A native speaker with a good comprehension of English will never use it, so you shouldn’t either.

Why Do People Tend To Spell It Wrong?

Why is it so common to spell wrong, then? Well, it comes down to two major factors. The first is hearing it spoken and seeing it written down. Hearing it spoken helps us understand that “to” and “too” are said the same way. For this reason, many people will spell them the same regardless of the context, which would make them wrong.

The second we can see in the written sense, and you’ve probably already noticed it in this article. “Too” is three letters long, and “to” is two letters, but it’s basically the same word without the extra “o.” A lot of people are confused by the usage of this extra “o” in the word “too” and so tend to avoid using it (or using it all the time instead of “to”).

Sometimes, we can hear the difference a little more obviously. Some people do stress “too” more than “to,” but it’s hard to distinguish as a non-native speaker. It’s just something you have to practice and get used to overtime.

How To Remember If The Correct Spelling Is To Late Or Too Late

We have a quick tip that might help you remember the correct spelling. Basically, remember that “too” is a modifier, and “to” is used only for verbs. With this in mind, knowing that “late” isn’t a verb should make it really easy to work out the rules. Also, if you’re still struggling, the fact that “too” modifies words shows that “too late” is just a more intense way to say “late,” which helps us to remember it!

You may also like: What are you up to or too: Here’s the correct version (with 5 examples) “You Too” or “You To” – Correct Version (With Examples) To Many or Too Many? Grammar Explained (Helpful Examples)

Martin holds a Master’s degree in Finance and International Business. He has six years of experience in professional communication with clients, executives, and colleagues. Furthermore, he has teaching experience from Aarhus University. Martin has been featured as an expert in communication and teaching on Forbes and Shopify. Read more about Martin here .

• Wrote or Written: Which Is Correct? (Helpful Examples)
• Difference To/With/From – Preposition Guide (With Examples)
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‘It’s never too late’ – Origin, Meaning, Expansion, Importance

Origin of the phrase.

The earliest written form of the proverb, ‘it’s never too late’, is often attested to be in the works of the novelist George Eliot in the late nineteenth century.

However, it is likely that by the time Eliot wrote the proverb down, people had been saying it to each other for centuries.

This proverb, “it’s never too late”, means that ‘it does not matter how late it is, a person should always take the opportunity to pursue their goals’. It means that:

there is always time to start what we wanted to start, there is always time to pick up again something that we had stopped doing. the present moment is always a great time to follow our dreams. This proverb encourages us to get to work. It emphasizes on the fact that that a new task can be started anytime and there is no need to waste any further time.

To what does ‘it’ refer, for example? It can be whatever activity the person using the proverb wants it to refer to.

This proverb is often cited as an answer to a complaint: when people complain ‘it is too late to do a thing’, other can reply that ‘it’s never too late’.

The idea of being too late is crucial to this proverb. Too late can be many things. It might mean missing a deadline for school. Or, it might mean getting too old to pursue a certain activity. Often, the idea of what is too late or on time is a subjective one.

The aim of this proverb is to ‘motivate people to begin projects that they had been putting off’. It’s never to late to learn something new. There’s always time to get an education. This proverb can be used to combat ageism.

Often, the phrase ‘it’s never too late’ is often incorporated into a longer phrase. For example, people sometimes say ‘it’s never too late to begin’ or ‘it’s never too late to change your life’.

The importance of this proverb.

1. Motivation: This proverb encourages people to start on their projects and realize their dreams.

2. Uplifting: When people feel despairing, as if they have missed their chance to do something they wanted to do, the proverb ‘it’s never too late’ can uplift them and banish those despairing feelings.

3. Countering prejudice: It is often said that at a certain point in our lives, it is too late to begin some projects. For example, there are those who think that pensioners are too old to go to high school or university or that people who missed out on passing their driving test the first time around have lost their opportunity completely. The proverb ‘it’s never too late’ assures us that, no matter how old we are, we can start anything that we want to!

4. Helping with work stress: In our working lives, we are often hit with deadlines that we cannot always meet. The proverb ‘it’s never too late’ encourages us to believe that it is never too late to salvage a situation.

5. Recovering relationships: This proverb is often cited in a romantic context. It’s never too late to tell the love of our life that we love them or to reconcile after some time apart.

Conclusion.

The proverb ‘it’s never too late’ is a positive and encouraging phrase that enables people to live life to the full. If we live by this proverb, rather than feeling like one missed opportunity means that we can never go back and start all over again, we know that it is in our power to begin whatever projects we want to begin – at any time of life. We can apply this proverb to all areas of life, whether in a professional context or in a romantic and personal context.

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Netflix finally reveals the truth behind the leaks but it's too late to stop the damage.

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Netflix's Denzel Washington Replacement Makes Upcoming Remake Of His 2004 Thriller Way More Exciting

My hero academia finally fixed its most criticized bakugo scene, my hero academia celebrates its ending in the best possible way with new global popularity poll, quick links, netflix finally breaks silence on the recent anime leaks, netflix may not be able to reverse the damage anymore, many fans are still unaware of the damage caused by such leaks.

• Netflix confirms that the leaks came from a post-production partner, possibly the dubbing studio Iyuno.
• The leaker has allegedly threatened to release more content but remains unidentified.
• Efforts to take down the leaked content prove difficult and may permanently damage the future of series leaked.

Netflix has finally revealed the truth behind the massive anime leaks that took the anime industry by storm earlier this week, but it seems like the damage has already been done. Nearly 48 hours after the leaks began surfacing, Netflix has finally revealed a statement on the situation, shedding light on the source of the issue, while employing much-needed damage control at last.

In a statement to The Wrap , a spokesperson from Netflix revealed that the leak stemmed from a post-production partner and claimed that they were aggressively taking action to have the leaks taken down. The exact statement reads:

One of our post-production partners has been compromised and footage from several of our titles has unfortunately leaked online. Our team is aggressively taking action to have it taken down.

This statement was released on August 8, 2024, almost two whole days after the leaks surfaced, by which time even more series like season 2 of Arcane, and the remaining episodes of MAPPA's Ranma 1/2 remake were also leaked. More importantly, these leaks have been reposted thousands of times already, which means, despite Netflix's efforts, the damage has already been done and may just be irreversible at this point.

Netflix's Subtitling and Dubbing Partner Was Likely Responsible

Though Netflix does not specify who exactly the post-production partner responsible for the breach was, a recent statement suggests it could have been Iyuno, a company that has previously provided dubbing services for many of Netflix's titles in the past. Iyuno posted a statement to their website on August 9, 2024, addressing a recent security issue involving unauthorized access to confidential materials and claimed they were actively investigating the breach and the parties responsible. The entire statement reads:

Iyuno is aware of a recent security issue, involving unauthorized access to confidential content. Protecting our clients’ confidentiality and ensuring the security of their content is our highest priority. We are actively investigating this security breach to mitigate any potential risks and identify the responsible parties. When there are material changes or information we will make further statements.

The timing and description of Iyuno's statement seem to perfectly match Netflix's statement to The Wrap and given Iyuno's long-standing history of working with Netflix, it is likely that the two security issues are indeed one and the same. The source of the leak being a dubbing studio also makes sense given the sheer amount of content leaked, the lack of subtitles, and the low quality of the files . That said, Iyuno's statement implies the perpetrator still hasn't been caught, which means this nightmare is far from over.

The Culprit Has Allegedly Threatened to Leak Even More Content

Though Netflix has finally begun copyright-striking reposts of the leaked content on X, it has become quite an impossible task to track down every single post as these leaks have already been widely circulated, reposted, and re-uploaded innumerable times over the last two days. Moreover, the original links on 4chan and torrent sites like Nyaa Torrents are yet to be taken down, without which the leaks will continue to be shared.

However, the biggest problem may be the original leaker themself, who is yet to be identified and apprehended, as per Iyuno's statement. According to a post on X by otaku_insider , the alleged leaker has revealed on 4chan that they have 87 thousand files in their possession and have no intention of ceasing the leaks, threatening to leak even more content from Paramount, Warner Bros., among many others, including the first three episodes of season 5 of Stranger Things.

The source above has not been verified.

Clearly, this has become a very serious threat that may be beyond Netflix's control anymore. The damage has been done, and it appears to be irreversible even if the leaker is caught in time and stopped. While the new information has proved that it was not inherently Netflix's fault , their brand has still been irreparably damaged, and it may be very difficult to recover from this incident.

Nonetheless, it appears Netflix will have their hands full taking down the copyrighted content for quite some time . In an ideal world, fans of the series they love could have aided these efforts by boycotting and reporting the leaks, but unfortunately, the anime community is one that thrives on leaks, often unaware of the damage they inflict on the prospects of their favorite series.

At the end of the day, creating anime is all about profits, and these leaks directly impact how well these series will perform when they are eventually officially released. This could lead to these series being sacked entirely and even destroy their chances of being renewed for another season.

As such, hopefully, neither Netflix nor any other streaming platform will ever experience an issue of this sort ever again. These leaks will no doubt go down as one of the biggest security blunders in anime history and will surely encourage better security measures are taken every step of the way going forward.

Source: The Wrap , Iyuno , otaku_insider /X

'But then it was too late' - Liverpool manager sold wrong player before trying to welcome him back

Roy Hodgson's time as Liverpool boss is best forgotten - not least because of this incredible oversight

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The short tenure of Roy Hodgson at Liverpool is not a marriage that ended well. Indeed most involved in those six months or so that the former England manager was in charge would rather forget about them.

Granted, the shoes of Rafael Benitez were big ones to fill, but Hodgson and Liverpool never seemed a convincing relationship. The recruitment was poor and, as a result, so was the league and cup form.

Just how much of an awful spell it was for the Reds was underlined back in 2019, when claims emerged that Hodgson once sold the WRONG PLAYER to former club Fulham, the side he left to manage on Merseyside.

Hodgson had just arrived at Anfield in the summer of 2010 when he looked to bolster a squad decimated in the wake of Benitez's departure.

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He returned to Craven Cottage to rubber-stamp the ill-fated move for defender Paul Konchesky, while it was agreed that young pair Lauri Dalla Vale and Alexander Kacaniklic would head in the opposite direction, accompanied by a fee of £3.5m

Kacaniklic, though, has since revealed that Hodgson, who turns 77 today, tried to put a stop to the transfer - because he was selling the wrong Alex.

"It was a bit difficult for Liverpool to replace me, but when I was in Fulham and before I signed up, I had a conversation with Roy Hodgson on the phone, where we found out that he had chosen the wrong Alex," said Kacaniklic to fotbolskananelen in a podcast.

"In his head, he thought he had sold another Alex for Konchesky. But then it was too late. It's a little fun!

"Then he just told me I was welcome back in Liverpool with open arms, but that I could do what I felt. By then I had already made my mind up and was very excited about coming to Fulham."

Kacaniklic says Benitez's exit had a detrimental effect on Liverpool, particularly among the younger players.

"When Roy Hodgson came to the club, it was a little different, a big change," he said. "Benitez had been there before and made the club his own with everyone who worked at the club.

"When he left and took all his people with him, it became a bit turbulent. Hodgson didn't look so much at us youngsters, he wanted quick results. He wanted Paul from Fulham."

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Kacaniklic, now 32, went on to play 100 times for Fulham before joining French side Nantes. He had a spell in Swedish homeland with Hammarby before moving to Hajduk Split and then AEL Limassol.

Hodgson went on to rebuilding his reputation, certainly at club level, after leaving Liverpool, although his spell in charge of England ended in disappintment.

This story was originally published in July 2019.

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Is It Too Late to Buy Dell Stock?

• Despite a 127% jump in stock value over two years, Dell trails behind Nvidia and Super Micro in AI-related gains.
• The company's AI systems achievement involved lower gross margins in response to "competitive pricing pressures."
• Its low valuation might spell opportunity for speculative investors, but Dell isn't a slam-dunk buy for every AI investor today.
• Motley Fool Issues Rare “All In” Buy Alert

Dell Technologies

Dell's stock more than doubled in two years but the shares still trade at reasonable valuation ratios. Is the computer builder a no-brainer buy today?

Computer systems builder Dell ( DELL 1.19% ) is experiencing a golden age. The company builds a ton of servers to train or operate artificial intelligence (AI) systems nowadays, and its stock has soared since the ChatGPT boom started.

Dell shares have jumped 127% over the last two years. That's nowhere near the 430% increase AI chip leader Nvidia ( NVDA -0.21% ) posted over the same period, and even further behind fellow AI systems builder Super Micro Computer 's ( SMCI -0.23% ) 932% gain.

Still, Dell's stock more than doubled in two years. Is it too late to jump aboard the bandwagon and buy Dell stock today?

Dell by the numbers

The AI boom has slowed down in recent months. Nvidia's stock is down 26% from its all-time high in June, and Super Micro fell 49% from an early-March peak. Dell followed the same trend, taking a 45% hit in the last two months.

Dell's max price was short-lived. Enthusiastic investors drove the stock price 51% higher in the four weeks before Dell reported first-quarter results.

When the report hit the newswires, management's guidance for fiscal year 2025 failed to impress. Dell expects roughly 8% year-over-year sales growth this year, up from a 14% full-year dip in last year's results. That was above the consensus analyst view of roughly 7% growth, but not the AI-driven victory march the most bullish Dell investors wanted to see.

So the stock fell 20% the next day and continued to slide for weeks. Here in early August, Dell shares are trading at modest valuation ratios, such as 19.6 times earnings or 0.76 times sales. These low ratios make the stock look like a steal next to soaring AI stocks like Nvidia and Super Micro:

AI Stock	P/E Ratio	P/S Ratio	P/FCF Ratio	Market Cap	1-Year Stock Price Gain
Dell	19.6	0.76	12.8	$67.9 billion	81.2%
Super Micro	33.7	2.97	N/A	$35.1 billion	79.5%
Nvidia	59.8	31.5	64.0	$2.52 trillion	131%

Data source: Finviz.com on Aug. 6, 2024. FCF = free cash flow. Table by author.

Is Dell a bargain buy or a troubled business?

So Dell trades at much lower valuation ratios than the leading AI-industry peers. Does the company deserve a more generous market treatment?

Well, at least some of Dell's AI systems success seems to spring from rebates. Along with Super Micro, Dell's gross profit margin is dipping lower in recent reports. There may be a price war brewing in the AI systems market. Dell CFO Yvonne McGill called it "a more competitive pricing environment" in the first-quarter earnings call.

Tomay-to, tomah-to. Same thing, different name.

So Dell is operating in a large AI market, but profit margins are shrinking in this explosive growth sector. At the same time, Dell's management projects lower top-line revenue growth than Super Micro. Skyrocketing growth is the way to earn nosebleed-inducing valuation ratios , and Dell isn't running that race.

To buy or not to buy Dell, that is the question

In the end, I'm tempted to pick up a few Dell shares while they're cheap. Every AI stock doesn't have to chase stellar growth, and there's a place for robust value picks in this booming market trend, too.

That said, Dell isn't a picture-perfect value investment either. The company just announced a deep restructuring of its sales force, involving an unknown number of job cuts, in an effort to cut costs and refocus on the AI opportunity. Management presents this project as a growth-focused "leaner and meaner" strategy, but cost-cutting programs always come with faint echoes of desperation.

So I'm not drooling over Dell as an investment opportunity right now. Its low valuation is matched by modest growth plans and signs of deep-rooted strategy problems. A small investment could make sense, as a speculative bet on better days and stronger long-term AI growth, but you should take it easy with this stock.

Anders Bylund has positions in Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy .

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Not Too Late For Cleveland Cavaliers To Trade For Brooklyn Nets Forward

Tommy wild | 21 hours ago.

• Cleveland Cavaliers

It’s the beginning of August, which means basketball season is just around the corner. The Cleveland Cavaliers have had a season full of locking up their core by signing Donovan Mitchell , Evan Mobley , and Jarrett Allen to extensions, but they haven’t done anything to add to their current roster.

It’s not too late for the Wine and Gold to pull off a blockbuster deal, and one player who remains a perfect fit for Cleveland is Brooklyn Nets forward Cameron Johnson .

According to NBA Insider Brett Siegel for Cltuch Points, the Cavs “have been among the various teams that have held discussions about trading for Johnson this offseason.” However, Siegel reports that “there was no heavy traction on a deal through the month of July” for any of the interested teams. 

Even though a deal hasn’t been close yet, that doesn’t mean one can form before the season starts. 

Siegel mentions that Brooklyn is looking for multiple first-round picks in exchange for Johnson. The Cavs don’t have a ton of first-rounders they can immediately trade due to what they gave up in the Mitchell trade two years ago, but they do still have some assets they may be able to entice Brooklyn within potential negotiations. 

There has been some buzz that the Cavs and Nets had possibly discussed Isaac Okoro sign-and-trade. Okoro remains a restricted free agent, and it’s unclear what his future looks like in Cleveland. 

Packaging Okoro, along with any future draft picks the organization is willing to give up, might be an enticing package for Brooklyn. 

Either way, the Cam Johnson trade market is certainly something Cavs fans will want to keep an eye on.

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How the late Shannen Doherty's performance in 90210 reboot was inspired by Brad Pitt: 'I'm gonna do that too'

Doherty appeared on a "Charmed" rewatch podcast before she died last month.

The late Shannen Doherty was "always scared to use props," during her three seasons on Charmed , she said on the latest edition of Charmed rewatch podcast The House of Halliwell .

Doherty, who died July 13 at 53 after a struggle with breast cancer, said in a posthumous prerecorded episode that it was the films of Brad Pitt that changed things for her. Explaining that script supervisors on the witchy drama had warned her to "make sure that you mimic or or copy exactly what that was, when you were eating, when you were doing this so that all the different angles you're matching, and it's easier for an editor."

Mike Marsland/WireImage; Neilson Barnard/Getty

She was "so hyper-aware of that," the actress recalled. This went on for years, but then BH90210 came along, airing for six episodes in 2019.

"It wasn't until I did the reboot of 90210 where I was, like, screw it. And I ate in every single scene because I love Brad Pitt in a couple of his movies where he was always eating. And so I was like, I'm gonna do that too to take myself out of my head."

Pitt's characters, particularly his Rusty in the Ocean's 11 movies that he did with George Clooney , are indeed known for eating on camera.

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Just a few days after Doherty's death, the podcast released an episode where she discussed the introduction of Alyssa Milano on the show, as a replacement for an actress from the pilot. While Doherty and Milano had their issues over the years, she was complimentary of Milano's work in the supernatural drama.

"When Alyssa came in, you know, it provided like a levity that I think the show ended up needing," Doherty said. "And she came in and she did a great job. And yeah, just brought like a slightly different flavor to the show."

In the wake of Doherty's death, Milano and many more of Doherty's former costars paid tribute.

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