That is such an important point. I think we forget about that sometimes that to factor that into thinking about how we might want to make these kinds of choices with intentionality. I wanted to share way back when I had Anne Marie Perez on the show. She spoke about, because part of the problem that we haven't discussed yet is when you do have rules, there are going to be some portion of students who don't know that they can ask. So just like you, it was like, I used to really have super hard, it's got to be in by that time or it's a go, no, go kind of thing. And then yes, of course, if someone comes to you and explains something that has happened, she had a story, I'm not going to tell it again, just such a heavy story to share, but a student experienced such a tragedy. And she only found out way after the fact what it was and thought, my gosh, if I had known, of course, I mean, talk about grace, all the grace in the world. And the student just didn't know that it was okay to ask. So by making these things more open and transparent, we're minimizing the incentive to be dishonest. We're minimizing the incentive to, and you talk about this too, of just turning in shoddy work. It's not really great work. It's just like, let me show, throw it in there so I can see anything I can get out of this game that this is. Let me see if 5% effort might get me 5% of the points or something like that. There's so many positives to it. The second thing I wanted to share is that you didn't say this explicitly, but you implied having no deadlines, not such a good thing. So you're not saying just free for all entire flexibility, just get to it when you can. Would you talk a little bit more about the benefits of that structure? Yes.

So I'm a big believer in structure with flexibility. And yeah, you're absolutely right. I very deliberately have deadlines, but flexibility within those deadlines. And I think when people hear, I am flexible with deadlines, they immediately go to thinking there's just no deadlines, right? It's just a free for all. And yeah, structure, I mean, humans work well with structure. That's sort of a fundamental human trait is that it helps if we sort of know what expectations are and where what we can do and where we can push and where we can't push. And for students in particular, I mean, in higher education, a lot of our students are coming in and they are just learning how to structure their own lives outside of a more controlled family environment. And so having clear deadlines, having a clear structure and organization is really helpful. But just like I was talking about, I don't want to focus on students complying with my rules, arbitrary or not. That's also something structure is great until it becomes rigidity, right? And that there's no flexibility that it's just about complying with my rules and not about why they're there. So if I have clear structure and deadlines, that helps people understand what they need to do to help make their own time work out the way it should to get it done. And then the flexibility recognizes that we're all humans and just like you were saying about that story, like things happen to humans big and small and we need to have a little bit of grace to just allow that to work. So yeah, have deadlines. I know people who go totally deadline free, but I think it's more useful to have that structure and have the flexibility around it. And actually I want to say one more thing too. You began mentioning there making expectations clear, but also making sort of the hidden curriculum clear, right? So knowing what you can ask for and what you can't. I mean, that's a huge thing, right? If a student knows they can ask me for free to extend a deadline, then they're more likely to use that than if I don't say anything and only the students who have the background or the experience, they're like, oh, yeah, I can ask for this. I can request it. Then the only people who I'm allowing to show me what they've learned beyond the deadline are the ones who already have some sort of advantage and know that they can do that. So making it really clear and explicit, this is my policy and this is how it's flexible. That's incredibly valuable, right? Just saying if they ask, I'll let them, I'll let them extend however much they want. It's asking for only certain students to benefit from

it.