Julian of Norwich and Student E-mails

We are reaching the time in one of my online courses that I teach where students miss quizzes and write me pleading e-mails trying to convince me to open the quizzes back up.  I can't do that.  I'll grade late writing, but quizzes must be taken before the due date or not at all.

I try to soften the blow a bit in my response.  I usually say something like this:  "After the quiz deadline, I can't reopen quizzes. But fortunately, each quiz is a very small percentage of your final grade. So just keep moving forward and doing your best and all shall be well."

I'm always tempted to add the complete quote from Julian of Norwich:  "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."  I wonder if any of my students get the reference.

In my early days (the late 80's) of discovering female voices that had been left out of literature anthologies, I most treasured Julian of Norwich for her writing. In later years, the theology of her writing fascinated me--so many centuries before any blooming of anything that could be called feminist, here was a woman writing about a feminine face of God.

I would never have predicted I'd be using her words to encourage my students to keep working towards success.  I suspect she wouldn't be upset.