Excuses, Excuses

I've finally succeeded in getting through to my students the message that if they wish for an absence to be excused, they must have had an emergency. Great, huh? Only now they simply describe every reason for which they intend to be absent as an emergency. I'm going to Puerto Rico to see my family for two weeks. It's an emergency. My mom had to borrow my car, because of an emergency. I have a court date, because I ran a stop sign on my way to an emergency. I don't have my paper done, and I can't bring it to the next class because I have to go home for a family meeting. Anemergency family meeting.

I'm especially annoyed with two-weeks-in-Puerto-Rico guy. I understand wanting to see your family, really I do. When I was in Illinois, which might as well have been a foreign territory, I came back home every chance I got. But, you know, I scheduled my visits for school breaks. I know, he says there's a family emergency--but what kind of family emergency do you know about two weeks in advance (when he first informed me of his intended absence)? And you know in advance it's going to take exactly two weeks? I'm thinking "emergency airfare special." Plus, he gave me this note saying that he was "willing to sign an agreement" that he intended to make up the work. WTF? If you want to pass a class, you have to do the work. It's not something extra that you do to placate the teacher. Even if you had a genuine emergency, doing the work is not optional. Fortunately, I have two weeks to decide what I want to do about this situation.