A student missed class last week. We have a freshman attendance policy so this is important news. He stopped by my office today to plead his case. He is sick due to complications from surgery he had a little while ago. He visited the campus health clinic to get a note. The campus health clinic nurse forgot to give him a note. He left the campus health clinic without reminding the nurse to give him a note.
What to do?
"I am sick and not recovering from my surgery. Do you want to see my infection?"
Are you effing serious? If I wanted to look at gross stuff like that, I'd have been a real doctor.
To all the future zombies out there, keep your infection to yourselves. And don't eat my brains. It's all I have.
It's good that you didn't look, Ben, because he might have screamed, "sexual harassment," if you did. I always have office hours with my office door open: if a student asks that I close the door, I reply that if it's that touchy, we shouldn't be discussing it. My job is to be their teacher, and maybe also academic advisor, with my authority and expertise limited strictly to academic matters, such as what courses to take for a major in my department: I don't have the training or background to be their physician/psychiatrist/counselor/personal assistant, and I never signed up to do any of that.
ReplyDeleteI actually have a statement in my syllabus to the effect " do not tell me about your personal, medical, or psychological problems - instead consult a physician or counselor for issues related to your private life"
ReplyDeleteIt's only about 10% effective - just today 1 e-mail about pregnancy complications, 1 e-mail about bad reaction to antibiotics, and 1 e-mail about just not going to be here today so give me all the notes instead...
Dear CM,
ReplyDeleteim sorry i cant post anythin today cause my sister'ss dog was diagnost with cancer this morning and i need 2 start chemo. i can bring the dog by ur office if u want. i will write a realy gud post next weak. thx.
-Shitface
I recently had an online student send me a photograph of his bashed-up face as documentation for an injury. He "fell" at a major annual sporting event and couldn't complete his essay. He swears that otherwise he would have had "plenty of time" to write the paper in the 60 minutes or so between the end of the sporting event and the midnight due date for the assignment.
ReplyDeleteHis face looked like he "fell" under the entire Green Bay Packers offensive line's cleats, so I can't even begin to imagine what actually happened.
I kept on roundhousing him with a iron gauntlet because he wasn't making the pipe-bombs fast enough.
ReplyDelete