Excuses, Excuses

Ya know, I almost wish they'd lie to me.

In a way, I like that I'm the kind of prof you can come to when your boyfriend breaks up with you, or when you boneheadedly forget to do an assignment. I guess they feel this way because I often ramble about my own student days when I'm talking, or that I'm not that far off from their age (though they constantly remind me that I'm not as young as I think... but I digress).

But I just can't relate to someone who overslept for an exam. If I had, I wouldn't tell the professor. And if I did, I'd hightail it to her or him in the middle of the exam without brushing my teeth. I would not email him or her when the class is over and she's sitting in her office trying to eat a soft pretzel and not bother the chick she shares her office with.

Anyway.

I try really hard to remember what I was like as an undergrad. Even in my first semester of grad school, I was pretty clueless. I'd go to class all smoked up, I'd disappear for an hour, go back to my room and take a nap, I'd not do assignments.

I also had disasters happen to me. My roommate's computer ate my paper for an AH class- not once, but twice. My grandmother, whose hospice care I'd been helping with, died the night before I was to give an hour-long presentation in one of my grad classes. My cat walked across one of my drawings, leaving footprints all over the surface.

I've overslept for classes, and that's not that big of a deal to me. But an exam? I don't understand. And when a student oversleeps for an exam, they invariably blame late-night studying for their alarm failure/setting it to pm instead of am/not hearing it, etc. In fact, they tell me they were up all night.

Hello? Up all night means that you're up since you got up yesterday. That your caffeine-addled brain (at least a pot of coffee or 3 Red Bulls full) probably won't shut off when the exam is over. That you probably didn't brush your hair, and if you're a girl, you should be using a writing implement to keep your hair back. You should be wearing layers upon layers of clothing, completely inexplicably. You shouldn't smell very good.

This is the root of my annoynce, I think. Not even putting enough effort into my class to pull a true all-nighter. Where's the dedication?

Of course I'm joking. A little.