Like cicada, every semester a few students "wake up" about two days before the end of classes, and attempt to "catch up" the semester's work in a vain attempt to pass the class.
This illustrates the paradox of college academic life: those whose past endeavors in high school was characterized by teachers constantly hounding these students for assignments (and the student responding with less-than-complimentary characterizations of these teachers) are the same students that, once having entered the "hassle-free" academic life of a college campus, show that they need that "nagging" high school teacher.
And my experience has been that intelligence and talent vary widely among these cicada students . . . . some are quite talented, but haven't practiced the self-discipline that will allow that talent to produce academic results.
Luckily, every semester I also have students who have been struggling with the material all term long; they may not always test well, but these students have slogged through all the assigned exercises, and have a good working knowledge of the material. These are the students who sometimes find themselves the recipient of a few extra points to "blow them over" into the next higher grade.
That same wind doesn't blow for my cicada students--they just get enough dirt to bury them until the same time next semester.
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