As lovely as it would be for universities to dispense entirely with due dates and other rules, it would be completely impractical. When you're a lecturer dealing with hundreds of students, a set criteria is the only way to ensure equitable treatment. Why should OP receive an extension for being thoughtless while others have to meet the deadline?

Doing things inside deadlines is part of school, hell it's part of life. In a real job out in the real world they're not going to let you take as long as you want to get projects done, they're not even going to give you an extra day. School is supposed to prepare us for later life, so why would they?

What about all the students who did the work and passed it in on time? To them it seems like OP is getting extra time to work on their project. If everyone could get full marks regardless of when they hand in the assignment why would anyone pass it in on time?

My former job was a university lecturer, I managed to handle it ;) I always had 1-2 students every assessment who genuinely had issues such as described by OP. It was very simple to get them to email me the digital copy, or something similar to prove they actually did the work. Giving 50% penalty does not accurately reflect the students ability.

#12 You sir are a badass and I thank you for shutting up the people who act as thought you had no experience with dealing with this kind of thing with students and believed you were talking out of your ass. And you're completely right with, there are plenty of ways to turn in an assignment same day and the students work would reflect whether they really had it done or were lying about having it done to get an extension to the end of the day and the grade would reflect that.

Cheers mate

This is why I prepare all necessary materials the night before. All I have to do is pick up my backpack and go. With a major assignment due like this, it's weird to NOT rummage through your entire backpack searching for said assignment if there was even a .001 percent chance of it being in there. Don't really see how this could have even happened.

College is designed to train you in a set of theoretical and practical skills needed for a particular career, not "prepare you for life". By the sounds of it the assessment was typed up, the professor could have easily asked OP to email it to them.

In real life, most people are willing to make small compromises in order to compensate for minor mistakes. An employer wouldn't necessarily fire someone for making such a mistake, especially if the situation wasn't particularly urgent or dire. They'd likely just make the person correct the mistake and discipline them in some way. OP certainly deserves some consequences but half credit is very harsh considering the paper is only one day late.

If this made you laugh that hard I'd hate to see what something actually funny would do to you..