Stuff my students tell me

I'm not sure if it's something about me in particular, or just that I'm an instructor in general, but I know way more about my students than I should. I mean I know about bouts with cancer, deceased spouses, issues with kids, issues with husbands, accidents, surgeries - you name it, they've told me about it. And that's fine, in fact, I'm flattered (at times) with how comfortable my students seem to be with me.

And then there's the stuff that I know because it's popped up in e-mails explaining why someone missed a class. The excuse. I hate "the excuse." I realize stuff happens - that's fine - but it's difficult to gauge whether the excuse is truth, fiction or somewhere in between. How am I supposed to mark someone's homework down because it was late when "I had a family emergency (complete with gory details)" is the excuse? I actually tend to believe that one - as long as there's only one family emergency, when one's grandmother dies 3 times I get suspicious. On the other hand, when you tell me you were sick, I hardly ever believe that one (I'm horrible, I know). That's amplified if you tell me you were sick on an exam day.

But today I got the mother of all excuses.

Backstory - I have 2 students who haven't showed up for any of the 4 classes so far this semester. At 3 I can drop them, but I e-mail after 2 and drop after 4. I haven't heard from one and next on the to-do list is to drop him from the roster. But I did get an e-mail from the other one this morning......

And the reason she hasn't been to class yet went something like this.......my best friend was murdered (add way more detail here, including the victim's name).

Yikes. What do I do with that?

First, I went to the local news website - and sure enough - the story checks out. Yikes again.

She went on to tell me that she's ready for something to take her mind off the sorrow and that she'll do whatever I want to catch up in class and will I give her a chance. So, I'm giving her a chance - she's behind and it's not going to be fun or easy, but if she's serious it'll work out fine.

I, on the other hand, am pretty scared. I'm happy to help someone catch up with school work and I can answer biology questions with the best of them - but I don't know how to deal with shock, depression or angst all that well and I hope that a minimal amount of that will creep into my dealings with this student.

Never saw this one coming - but I guess that's what makes it interesting.