Learn the story of how our speaker's student attempted to negotiate in English with her about a poor grade
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| Student Excuses |
| "I don't understand why I got a zero on the pop quiz." |
| The student stands in the doorway to my office, yelling across at me as though she doesn't want to get too close. She is clearly angry. |
| "I'm sorry?" |
| "I want to know why I got a zero on the pop quiz," she says, hand on her hip. "I wasn't even there." |
| I stare back at her. This is a new one to me, and I have heard a lot from my students over the years. |
| "Right, you were absent. You got a zero." |
| "But I wasn't there," she says. |
| I really don't know what to say. She wants to know why she got a zero on a quiz that she wasn't even there to take. Pop quizzes are, by their very nature, given without warning in class. If a student is absent, they do not get to make the quiz up. |
| That would defeat the purpose. |
| I explain this to the student. She is still not happy and threatens to go to my supervisor, the department chair. I tell her that is her right as a student. This makes her even angrier, and she turns to stomp down the hallway. |
| At the community college, students are allowed to miss a certain percentage of class time. The problem is that many students take this as their cue to take as much time off as they are allowed before being removed from the class. I have to admit, I have taken a few college classes that seemed a waste of time, but I was paying for them, so I went. And despite my feelings about the class, I usually learned something. |
| By the way, the student did go to my department chair. She told the student the same thing I did. We swear that someday, we'll compile a book of student excuses and make a pile of money, if only from our fellow teachers. |
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