End of Semester

We are now almost at the end of the Fall semester. I am preparing to submit my marks for my classes next week. I have supervised three exams so far this week and have one more to do tomorrow. This semester none of my classes wrote final exams so these have been strictly supervision of exams other faculty will mark. Supervising exams is generally boring work. However it has to be done in order to protect the integrity of the exam process -- or so I am told.
I am amazed each semester how, all of a sudden it seems, many students start to take an interest in their marks. Perhaps it is not all of a sudden for the students, perhaps they only get vocal with their concerns at the end of the semester. I have had a significant number of e-mail messages from students asking about marks on assignments that were marked and returned anywhere from two to eight weeks ago.
And every semester, after the exam is over, at least two or three students, sometimes six or eight, ask if there is anything they can do to raise their mark. My response is usually something like "the course is over, there is nothing you can do now". I wonder if students have been trained to ask such a question or if there are always a few people who believe in asking such questions just in case the answer is "yes".
Invariably the students who express the most concern about their marks or about extra work are those students who should have been concerned during the semester. They should have been paying attention to their marks and finding ways to learn the material during the semester. If you are in a race and you are way behind the rest of the people you don't think to ask the coach or the judge if you could run some more after the race to show how fast you can be. You either stay far behind or you find a way to get ahead -- during the race, not after it is over.
Maybe I will try that analogy on my classes in the next semester. It sounds to me like something they will understand.