Leading Horses to Water

It's that time of the semester again; students are revealing all the ways they can be -- well, let's just say less smart than it seems they should be. I have one student who told me at the beginning of the week that she isn't able to be in class for the grammar exam, a top secret test that I have to "deploy" and password protect. There is a way she can do it outside of class, but it is a big pain in the ass (for me, not for her), and it's been on the syllabus AND the week-by-week assignment calendar I handed out. Once I got that squared away, she asked me when her review would be. I didn't get what she was talking about, but then I figured out that she will miss our entire class final review, so she expected me to have a personal review for/with her. Um, no. And to top it all off, she had claimed that she'd been keeping up with her online-program work, but I couldn't see it. So I had her bring it up in class, and she was using a link that had the course title -- with DO NOT USE after it. I said, "Didn't you see the 'do not use' message?" She replied, "It was the only one I could get into." Oh, for Lord's sake. Okay, fine.

But she isn't the only one. A student returned to one of my classes on Tuesday after ten -- yes, that's right, ten -- absences. He had emailed me on Monday, and I told him that he could not pass the class after missing so much time. He still showed up on Tuesday. After class, I told him again that he could not pass, but if he thought that decision was unfair, he was welcome to appeal it. And then he showed up again today! WTF? Another student in the same class emailed me on Tuesday and said, "Hi, Professor. When are your office hours?" So I replied, but added that if he was coming in to talk about his grade, the only option at this point is failure for non-attendance; he's came to class twice early in the semester. Oh, golly!

At one college, I have a week left, and at the other, two. It's hard to know what other problems will pop up between now and then. If these students had cared as much about their grade earlier in the semester as they do at the end, maybe they would have passed. At the very much, life would be easier for me -- and probably for them too. Sheesh.