Graphic by Pearl Knight and Avery Szakacs.
Assignment submission times are vastly varied between professors. For physical submissions, work is either handed in at the beginning of class or taken up on a student’s way out the door. I believe digital assignments deserve the same treatment for students’ mental and physical health, with submissions at class times.
Professors are allowed to determine the due dates and times for all of their assignments, meaning that some choose any hour of the day. A common time professors utilize is an 11:59 p.m. deadline before their class is held the following day. While this is the preferred option among some students, I don’t think this is the best solution.
College students are known to put off assignments until the last minute, with 75% considering themselves procrastinators, according to Itamar Shatz of Solving Procrastination. This is not claiming that procrastination in itself is a good thing – a paper published in the Journal of College Student Development reports there are many drawbacks of putting off work until the last minute.
However, knowing the vast majority of students will be up late completing 11:59 p.m. assignments, we need to face the reality that this schedule doesn’t seem more beneficial to students than daytime submissions.
It’s because I’m a procrastinator myself that I find the midnight deadline unreasonable. I work long hours during the week, and I would prefer to have till class time to finish an assignment than having to submit it at 11:59 p.m. the previous night to have the maximum time possible to finish my work. Having assignments due the day of actually gives me more time as I’m not forced to cram in assignments the night before class.
The solution seems simple to me: course assignments should be due when classes are in session. If paper assignments were still standard practice, students would physically turn in assignments in class with no option for digital submission chaos. Whether they worked the night before or morning before class, they would have more freedom to manage their own time.
Staying up late disrupts circadian rhythm, making people less productive than at other times of day. If deadlines extend through the night before up until the class session, students have flexibility.
Night owls can still stay up late the night before if they prefer, and don’t have to worry about asking for an extension if they need a few extra minutes to finish their work past midnight.
A further complication of midnight submissions is that to have energy to complete late-night assignments, students need to find food. Unfortunately, very few dining options are available after 10 p.m. citywide, with even less of these offering healthy choices. As the British Food Journal reports, frequent consumption of junk food contributes to feelings of burnout, NC State Dining is not conducive to student overall health at 11:59 p.m. submission times.
One downside to daytime submissions is that some students are busy with other work or classes during the day and they might not be able to manage assignments around their schedules. Some course sites don't remind students of assignments until the day of, and morning submission times may not be seen at night when someone may want to knock out their work.
If day submissions became the new standard, there would be no stress about remembering which assignments are due when — just have any work done by the time of that class.
Time management is an important skill to develop, and a flurry of assorted submission times is not how one learns to do so. Maybe professors aren’t aware of the hectic schedules and other assignment standards students are actually forced to deal with in the modern age. However, if classes have assignments due on the same day of the week no matter what, then it could be beneficial to have till 11:59 p.m. to complete it.
Setting due dates alongside these pre-technological standards at class times would be beneficial for students and seem to be the best option.
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