Dr. Mr. EFL Answer Man Deals With One of those Annoying Whiny Students

Dear Dr. EFL Answer Man,

Your analysis of my previous writing has inspired yet another question for which I am hoping to receive an even higher grade. Your answer was complete, it seems, yet it begs for more clarification in a similar situation:

Are trades completed within this weird time-space continuum applied to May or June? Your answer will be graded because it has special meaning for us based on the trade made this afternoon. I will not grade objectively.

Curiously Yours,
Sophmoron Manager

 

Dear Sophomoron:

I believe I explained this already: “we even have events that occur simultaneously on two different dates!”

Any trade takes effect immediately  in the sense you’re committed to it and can’t back out even if on the very next day the player breaks his arm while pitching.

Every trade simultaneously takes effect when you submit your next allocation, in the sense that you have to start paying him and you can start counting his stats.

Every trade also simultaneously takes effect at the beginning of the month for which you submit that next allocation, for the purpose of accumulating those stats.

So — your trade of Heyward for Hutchison took effect this morning. And it will take effect when you submit your allocation by 5 pm on Saturday evening.  And it has taken effect as of last Friday when May statistics started being generated.

Ok, by some ways of counting that’s three different dates, not two.  So sue me.

Now, as for your request for a higher grade, you remind me of a case that happened to Mrs. Dr. EFL Answer Man (if it ever gets out that I called her that, there’s probably going to be trouble on at LEAST two grounds).  A student had totally neglected a major body of assignments in class, didn’t like the exceedingly bad grade he got, and wrote to her saying how sorry he was and could she please give him a higher grade? After all, he pointed out, he was pretty smart and could easily have earned a higher grade except for the technicality that he hadn’t actually done the assignments.

Now Mrs. Doctor EFL Answer Man may be the most decorated faculty member in the history of the university — she’s certainly the most decorative one.  She’s been Teacher of the Year, she is the newly-installed Researcher of the Year, and in the College of Arts and Sciences she was named just last Friday the best exemplar of Love in her attitude toward those around her.

She declined to give her whining student a higher grade.

Whatever is good enough for her is certainly good enough for me.  So you will have to live with your B.

Sincerely yours,

Mr. EFL Answer Man