Excuses, Excuses

Yes, I'm back to the excuses thing. I had a mini-episode last week when I got this barrage of absences complete with all the requisite excuses from both of my classes. Some of them were absolutely legitimate. For example, we got a huge snow storm last Tuesday and most school districts were closed. Mine, however were not so while we had class, things like day cares were closed leaving the working/going to school moms a little bit up the creek. I get that and I sympathize.

Then I had a few like "I worked later than I thought last night and I'm too tired to come in." And my personal favorite was a kid telling me that his Dad who was in Japan at the time of the snow storm had told his son (my student) not to drive to class on Wednesday morning because of the snow (a - you're in Japan - what do you know about road conditions here? and b - THERE WAS NO SNOW ON WEDNESDAY). I had one woman bring me a doctor's note telling me that she was sick all week and couldn't study for the exam (she's in her 40s).

And so this all added up to my husband and mother both having to listen to me rant about the craziness of excuses.

But here's the thing (to steal a phrase from my husband) - last semester I would have bent over backwards to help these people make up their work and labs and quizzes. I was writing out my own lecture notes for people and posting them on-line. I was waiving late penalties. I really didn't want people to do badly in my course.

I STILL don't want people to do badly in my course, but this semester something has changed. I simply don't care what the excuse is, legitimate or not, if you missed work I'm not going out of my way to help you and that's it. You signed up for the 8AM class. You scheduled an appointment for an exam period. You didn't check Blackboard until 9PM the night before the exam.

I don't want to sound mean and horrible. I'm not, in fact I'll still bend over backwards to help you.......but only if you were trying to help yourself first. Otherwise I'm not so much assisting you through the course as much as I am carrying you through the course and that's not in the job description.