Friday, January 20, 2012

Should Be a Fun Winter Session

Two students missed my first day of class. One had already e-mailed me to tell me he was ill, and I approved the absence. (This is a small discussion class that meets during the January "Winter Session"--we only meet eight times, so missing one three-hour class is a big deal.)

The second was a no-show. His absence gave hope to the four not-enrolled-but-the-Registrar-told-them-to-show-up-and-see-if-I'll-break-the-class-size-limit-rule students.

By the time the second day of class started, I still hadn't heard from the no-show. I had just started telling the four persistent non-enrolled students (all of whom sat through the first day of class and then showed up for the second) that one of them just got lucky, since some numbnuts never showed.

Then he walked into the room, this person I'd never seen before, and sat with everyone else.

"Uh," I said, "are you so-and-so?"

"Yeah," he said.

"You missed the first day of class."

"Yeah, I know."

"Is there a reason you missed the first day?"

"Yeah," he said, annoyed. "I was taking a nap."

This bodes well.

6 comments:

  1. Okay, but what did you do? Did "Numbnuts" get the spot or one of the non-enrolled? Or did you bend the rules and let everyone stay?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Are you allowed to drop absent students from the class yourself?

    Our university is suffering budget cuts and class shortages, like so many institutions, and many classes often have students clamoring to be allowed in at the start of the semester. The university allows faculty to drop any student who fails to attend the class meetings during the first week of the semester, so that waiting students can be admitted.

    It is not required that faculty drop non-attending students, but I figure that if you can't drag yourself to class in the first week, you're probably going to be a slacker for the whole semester. I always send an email out the week before the semester begins, telling my students that anyone who misses class during the first week will be dropped from the roster.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Don't worry. I slept through my first class this term while I was teaching it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. For these short sessions our college allows us to drop first day no-shows. That guy deserves it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Now you know why I tell my Intro-Astronomy-for-non-majors class that I am skeptical that UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft, one major reason being that there has never been a well-documented, definite recovery of technology that definitely must be alien, such as a ray gun with which I could actually vaporize someone. I tell my students that if any of you ever come across such a thing, please let me know, since I have a list of people I'd like to vaporize. This pea-brain would make the cut.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @AdjunctSlave and Defunct Adjunct: I couldn't kick Numbnuts out of the class because students are allowed one unexcused absence, and so far this kid hasn't skipped again. I ended up caving and allowing three of the four non-enrolleds to enroll and bust through the ceiling of my class size cap (the fourth had a scheduling conflict). During the semester, I never would have done this, but for Winter Session, it's a pass/fail class with no grading, so it's not going to be much more work for me.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.