I appreciate that these are being used as simple analogies, but since they are phrased as real-world scenarios I feel that it weakens my visualisation of the situation in hand by not explicitly commenting on the time-scales over which the teacher/pupil wishes to maximise their utility.

Each example refers to the impact of the initial setup, or decision made when faced with an excuse, to the overall utility of the outcome but fails to convey to me clearly the success or failure criteria.

I would find it valuable if we were able to split the scenarios into a timeline decision tree to show how the impact of initial setup and decisions made would affect the utility over time, which would allow me to visualise the most beneficial path once I had decided on the timescale over which I wish to consider. (Taking this even further I would most likely attribute different weightings to my utility function depending on time-horizons and then attempt to maximise over the whole.)

What variation would there be in setup and decision if my consideration was for a one-shot decision versus a long-term career?