Missing -- Fatals

Sorry to see we had two more fatals. Again, they fell under the whoops-I-goofed category.

One of you identified the police sergeant as being from Lansing. In fact, it was East Lansing.

Another attributed a quote to the college professor, when that quote actually was from the cop.

Again, be sure that you carefully compare what you've written to what you have in your notes to make sure it's consistent and correct.

For those of you keeping score at home, we now have SIX people -- that's more than half this class! -- who have had at least one graded fact fatal sofar. (Plus we have a seventh person who time-fataled.)

Actually, that's not bad for this point in the semester. Combining speed and accuracy comes with making mistakes and learning from those mistakes. In four years of teaching JRN 200, I have had exactly TWO people who never fataled. And I don't know how the hell they did that.

I'd also like to point out the two latest fatals came from two people who have been performing extremely well sofar in this class. It just goes to show you fatals can happen to anyone at any time, if you fail to dot the I's and cross the T's and do your due diligence in fact-checking every time.

It's not whether you fatal in this class; odds are you will. It's whether you learn from your fatals. That's the goal.

So don't freak out. You're working on it, right?