I think I wrote all of this out because this was a very stressful period in my life, and I'm probably still dealing with some of the fallout. If anyone cares to read both sides of the story, here is the email correspondence between Kevin Gold and myself, along with the timeline of events.

Sept 27th - Homework 2 assigned; Due Sept 30th by midnight for full credit. Due by Oct 2nd for 25% off.

Sept 28th - I informed the professor that my grandfather passed away and I would be out of class for the week.

Oct 1st: I email him asking for an extension due to sitting shiva:

I know this is reaching you after the deadline, but I have been very busy this week with the funeral and family and I haven't had a chance to start the homework. I would like to request that you don't post the solutions so that I may still be able to hand in the homework later tonight, or more likely tomorrow, with the penalty. I don't think I'll be able to finish it by the end of the night, but if it's possible an extension would be incredibly helpful.

Oct 1st: His response:

Hi ______,

Looking back at my email, it looks like the homework was actually due before the funeral. So, I don't think I can grant an extension in this case. I encourage you to give it your best tonight and turn in what you have before noon tomorrow; this way, you won't fall further behind on PS3. Let me know if you want some eleventh hour office hours tomorrow morning.

Best of luck,

~KG

After receiving this email, I rushed to do the homework and hand it in before midnight. As I was working from my parents' home, I was limited by my surroundings. I hand-wrote the homework and scanned it to email. There were a few issues with my submission: It was upside-down, & page 3 was missing, instead I'd scanned page 2 twice.

Oct 6th: I email the professor to ask for a 24 hour extension for homework 3. He gives me the extension, and lets me know that he's waiving the 25% penalty for handing in HW2 late. I got my grade back on this assignment and it was understandably low, however the 25% penalty was assessed.

Correspondence:

Hello Professor,

I know this is reaching you late but I've just now gotten back to Boston and have started on HW3. A lot of this is above my head and the lecture slides are somewhat helpful, however they don't compare to the actual lecture. I couldn't go to any office hours because I was in Baltimore and there won't be office hours until tomorrow after the due date. Can I have a 24 hour extension on the homework so I can bring questions to your office hours tomorrow after lecture and then complete the homework? Currently I'm having troubles with question 3 and onwards.

Thank you,

Reponse: That's fine. We're also waiving the 25% penalty on 2. But 4 will be normal. ~KG

Oct 7th: The situation escalates.

Hello Professor,

Looking at my grade for HW2 I'm unsure if it was graded properly. It seems my submission messed up and number 1 and 2 didn't get submitted. I submitted this in a rush as I was still under the impression that I wouldn't be able to submit on Friday so I rushed to get it done Thursday night. I've attached the missing file and I hope you will re-grade this with the first 2 problems. I was shocked to see such a low grade. I'm sorry the pdf is upside down, it was scanned that way.

Also, the assignment was graded with the 25% penalty. You mentioned above that you'd be waiving it. Please take a look and let me know.

I'm sorry for all the confusion surrounding this. I hope we can sort this out and that the rest of the semester runs smoothly.

Thanks,

Things to note: I was docked 5% for handing it in upside down.

His response: Hi _______,

I was on the fence about allowing you to submit your extra page well after the deadline, but decided in the end that the "pedagogically correct" thing to do would be to grade it, but then assess the 25% penalty for the submission mixup. This turns out to be in your favor (you made more than 9 points on that first page) while I hope sending a strong enough message that resubmissions a week after the original deadline are really not acceptable. (I believe you're being honest -- if I didn't, I would never admit it at all -- but there's only a certain level of tolerance for mixups and lateness that your family situation warrants, and you've exceeded your budget.)

I regraded your problem set personally, and oddly, it comes out to 7/35 after all. (That was not intentional; I just tend to notice more errors than the TAs.)

Breakdown: Upside down -2 1) a) 2pts b) 5 pts c) 2 pts (missing a flipped-dead-state transition) 2) a) 3pts (bad construction recognizes different language) b) 2 pts (same) 3) 1 pt (DFA's don't have transitions on empty string, missing other direction) 4a) 1 pt 4b) 2 pts (both wrong construction; see solution) -25% (9 pts) for bad submission = 7 pts.

I believe I'll be posting solutions to the problems after all, so you can compare to those solutions when they're posted or come to office hours to ask questions.

You can still recover from this, but you should take your errors here very seriously. Upside-down, late, partially-submitted assignments are really not acceptable; you can have maybe one of those with a good reason, but not all three.

Also keep in mind that this score is low before the penalties -- it would be 18 when the class median is 30. You should definitely put more time into this class, and you should probably acquire the book if you haven't already done so. A study/homework group may also be helpful. Ask questions on piazza. Coming to office hours like you did Tuesday is also good. I know you didn't have much time, but you should have done better with the time you had.

Please turn it around (for your own sake), ~KG

My response:

Is the 25% a 25% of the total submission? That's what the TAs assessed it as, not 25% of the total points. With 25% off my earned points I'd hit ~12. Thank you for re-grading it with the first page in, I'm sure you've been in a situation where you submitted something past midnight and didn't get the submission 100% correct. Do you really have to take 2 points off for upside down? That's how the scanner was oriented and I didn't have a pdf editor on my parent's computer to rotate it. If I'd known I'd get points off I would have taken the time to download one but I didn't think it to be the most important aspect of the homework.

His response:

It's 25% of the total submission, yes. I'll remind the TAs.

You are also definitely losing -2 for the upside-down submission. It makes grading much more difficult to need to turn our computers upside-down or what have you, and it's easily correctable on your end. Upside-down work is also clearly unacceptable under any imaginable professional circumstances. In general, the TAs have free rein to take off points for lack of clarity and messy submissions, but I've specifically told them they can take off -2 for upside-down submissions. "That's how the scanner was oriented" makes no sense to me (how about orienting the homework instead of the scanner?), but even were that the case, it's on you to come up with a professional submission.

Sorry, ~KG

At this point, if anyone is still reading. I went to my advisors and Doreen Hodgkin, because I felt the professor was not honoring the university's defined policies regarding funerals.

Oct 8th: He sends this email, subject line "Apology and assignment waived"

Hi _______,

You know, you're right -- to think that you had enough time to do Problem Set 2 because the funeral wasn't until Wednesday was dumb and insensitive. I'm sorry. The argument over upside-down and partial submissions made me forget why your assignment had been turned in hastily and piecemeal in the first place. We had decided to waive the 25% penalty for lateness and go from there, but in retrospect, I probably should have backed up a few levels and done what I'm doing now.

I'll waive Problem Set 2 for you -- your homework total will just be out of a different maximum from the rest of the class.

Did you feel you were amply prepared for Problem Set 3? We can, if you wish, waive that as well if you feel the grieving process or your missing class interfered. Just let me know (but I think you should let me know before we grade it).

Am I correct in thinking you're on track with Problem Set 4? That we can grade that normally?

My offer from before of additional office hours for you still stands, if you need any catching up before the midterm.

Apparently your adviser is going to contact me about this tomorrow, so I suppose it's possible something will change as a result of that conversation, but this is what I feel is right just reading the forwarded exchange between you and your adviser. This message isn't under duress -- it's just my sincere apology.

Best wishes,

~KG