Okay I was going to say unless they failed otherwise that was a dick move on your part cos attendance policies are bullshit but if it was pass/fail on criteria that simple then they deserved it.
They both admitted they didn’t deserve to pass. I always fail half of this class because they never show. These two guys were the first two to show up to be failed in person.
While I don’t particularly like attendance policies in college, if a class has them, and the students are aware of them, then I have absolutely no sympathy for students who suffer the consequences of them, without a good reason.
Part of college is preparing you for adulthood and the real world. In the real world, there are consequences to your actions. If a class has a 70% attendance policy, and you don’t meet that, that’s your own fault.
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Even though it’s the most arbitrary rule ever? The consequences are that if you don’t learn well on your own you show up and learn and get good grades or don’t show up and get bad grades. The outcome is the same but in the mean time there’s undue burden on the people who don’t need a teacher to hold their hand through the lessons. They are inconvenienced and their time wasted.
Yes, even if the rule is totally arbitrary. If you know about the attendance policy in advance, there is no excuse.
When a student takes a class with a professor, a compact is formed. The professor promises to do his or her best to teach the material, answer questions, etc. The student promises to do whatever assignments, papers, tests, etc that the professor assigns. If the student fails to live up to his or her end of the agreement, there are consequences and these consequences are spelled out ahead of time in the school’s or the professor’s guidelines and syllabus.
In some classes, with some professors, part of the student’s responsibility, besides turning in assignments, taking tests, etc is to show up. If there is an official attendance policy for the class, it doesn’t matter if Student A can get a good grade even if he or she doesn’t go to class. By taking the class, the student and the professor have formed a kind of contract. Part of the student’s obligation in upholding that contract is to attend class. By not attending class, or not attending frequently enough, the student has violated that contract. Like with real contracts, if you break it, there are consequences and even penalties.
Additionally, letting a student who didn’t attend the required number of classes pass, despite this going against the rules, is unfair to all the students who did go to class the required amount of times. Maybe those other students didn’t want to be there either. But they showed up. They fulfilled their part of the professor-student contract. As a result, if you break the attendance policy, you should suffer the consequences that are spelled out. The learning ability of the student plays no part in this.
In the real world, there are speed limits. If the speed limit is 35 mph, and you go over that limit, you get a ticket. It doesn’t matter what the driver’s skill level is. Whether you’re a 16 year old who just got his or her license yesterday or an F1 driver who has 25 years of experience, it doesn’t matter. The ability of the driver doesn’t factor into it. There is a rule. If you violate that rule, you suffer the consequences. A speed limit of 35 mph in a given area can be just as arbitrary as an attendance policy. Why not 40 mph or 45 mph?
Just because Person A is a good enough driver to successfully navigate a road at 50 mph, doesn’t mean that he or she can, when the stated speed limit is 35 mph. Regardless of skill or ability level, the rules apply to everyone equally.
Edited to add:
I am very good at my job. If I am able to do a full day’s work in 5 hours, instead of 8 hours, I don’t get to go home early, I have to stay at work and start something else.
We as a society don’t change the rules depending on an individual’s skill level. The rules apply to everyone equally. Really smart and political 17 year olds don’t get to vote. Really skilled 13 year olds don’t get to drive. It doesn’t matter if a 20 year old can drink responsibly, the law says you have to be 21 to legally drink alcohol. If that 20 year old shows his or her ID to a bouncer at a bar, they’re not getting in, regardless of anything else.
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Plenty of exceptions to rules exist.
If someone has a reason to not go to class and and they sit down with the teacher and discuss an exception or exemption, or just even an informal understanding on a wink and nod that a deviation will occur, and while nothing is official both parties understand what the deal is, then cool.
I made a lot of progress with teachers saying “hey I’m gonna doodle in class. But that’s just how I do” and they seemed to generally be cool with it. Other times I just did it and said nothing and they would generally complain, or sometimes just do nothing.
If you just don’t ever come to any classes, then who the fuck knows what’s up? If you fail that’s on you. If you go to the prof and say “hey I’ve already studied this mostly so can I skip the lectures?” Then they turn the tables and fail you at the end anyway, that’s reason to be upset at an insutrctor, even if they are following the written rules, for being a slimy-ass prick.
In seventh grade one time the teacher called out one of the other students in class asking why he wasn’t taking any notes.
The kid said “Scott doesn’t take notes.”
The teacher said “Scott’s getting an A.”
Oh snap.
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We aren’t talking about any of those situations though. Based on the situation that @ruffas described, these students just didn’t show up, without talking to the professor beforehand. Even when asked why an exception should be made to the attendance policy, they couldn’t come up with one.
In that situation, even if the attendance policy may seem stupid and arbitrary, if you break it, you suffer the consequences, and I have absolutely no problem with that.
Right, I agree with that. If you just don’t show up then it’s on you. If you break a rule even a dumb one expect to be called on it. Basic stuff.
If a student doesn’t want to come, because it’s stupid, make up any reason and clear it and then enjoy not following the dumb rule.
I’m just pointing out that even when there are rules, exceptions do always exist. Someone will figure out a way around and so, while I’m not in any way a lawyer, i think rules should always be considered with the fact they are ultimately artificial and subject to… Human factors.
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Alcohol and traffic laws aren’t arbitrary, they’re in the interest of public health and safety. An attendance policy is about the most arbitrary rule I can think of. No one but the student gets hurt if they don’t show up and even then it’s not physically. No one ever died from getting an F.
In general, you’re correct. But it is completely arbitrary that you can’t legally drink at 20, but can at 21. Hell, in the past, the legal drinking age was 18. Personally, I think we should go back to that.
Traffic laws are similar. Some states have a speed limit of 65 on highways. Some have a 75 limit. Regardless of what that limit is, if you break the speed limit, no one is going to care that you’re capable of driving at a higher speed.
A voting age of 18 is a completely arbitrary number. Plenty of kids who are younger are capable of doing the research necessary to make an informed decision. Plenty of aduls who are older are completely uninformed and vote purely based on party affiliation. We don’t give intelligence tests to determine who and who can’t vote and at what age, we have a one size fits all policy for voting. It’s the same with an attendance policy.
If a student doesn’t like a mandatory attendance policy, take a different class with a different professor. If all classes have that policy, then maybe try to get an individual exception. But if you can’t get an exception, or just don’t show up, and don’t have a reason, don’t expect the rules to not apply to you, regardless of your ability level.
I skipped entire classes, just showing up on exam days, and did fine.
I tended to withdraw from classes that required attendance. More tactically, several classes counted lab (only) attendance as 10% of your grade. If I was shooting for the B anyway, I’d just take the 10% off the top and never attend.
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The only classes I recall taking that required attendance were foreign language classes and in that case, well, I think it’s kind of understandable. It’s pretty hard to learn how to converse in a foreign language only from a book. Being in class at least gives you the opportunity to converse in said language and practice using it.
Other than that, I usually attended my classes because I generally found them beneficial. However, my best friend pretty much never attended class and always was able to ace everything. He was a total workaholic though, so I’m not sure how much that played into his abilities.
I have no problem with people skipping class.
It’s when people skip class and then feel like the rules shouldn’t apply to them, that they’re somehow special, that’s when I have a problem.
Like you wrote, either you withdrew from a class with required attendance, or factored that into your end of the year grade. You never tried to weasel your way out of it or were upset when the professor followed the already-known policies.
I look at attendance policies the same way as I do civil disobedience: You can break the rules, just be prepared to live with the consequences.
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I have no problem with people skipping class if they can come up with a half good reason. These kids that got failed in person had not been there since day one. If they had a coherent answer to the assigned prompt and could string together a sentence about why they shouldn’t fail, I’d have given them a barely passing grade. However, they answered the wrong prompt and couldn’t give more than one-word answers. There was a girl last year that was like, “It’s a Sunday afternoon; sometimes I just didn’t wanna come.” and I passed her because came up with a reason, and I thought the same thing.
I tell them the school’s attendance policy up front because these double-major classes always go from 50+ on day one to ~20 the next week. They choose their F, and I’m happy to give it to them.
EDIT: If they come to class and don’t look like they’re paying attention, that’s fine too; I was that kid. I always had my head down or was reading in class. Teachers were annoyed at first, until they learned through calling on me in class that I always had a correct answer. I get that. I even had a middle school teacher go to bat for me when my high school didn’t put me in a first-year AP class for…reasons (I don’t remember why). There’s a girl in one of my classes now that’s always has an earbud in, but I don’t care because she also always has something to add.
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Yep. I failed one course because it had a clicker thing. I never bothered to buy the clicker. There were in class questions you just had to answer, not even get right, and not doing so some number of times got you a fail. I still learned what “I” wanted to from the class. I went into college with the policy that I’ll only do the work I want to do, and carried that on to adulthood. It causes some conflicts, two years ago it even got me punched in the face, but I’m living the life I want to live.
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Really my point has been that the rule shouldn’t exist in the first place, not that you shouldn’t be beholden to rules you agreed to. I did withdraw from every class in university that had attendance policies and wrote letters to professors and deans in protest. I withdrew from my first community college paralegal course entirely the second I found out there was a campus wide attendance policy because I hated it that much and refused to agree to it. I still went to class at the other college but I wasn’t going to be arbitrarily penalized for a choice not to go.
I feel you. These rules are stupid and don’t help anyone. I had my final exams rejected three times because there was some rule it didn’t fit. “It needs to be B5.” Okay. “Vertical margins need to be 1.8cm and horizontal margins need to be 2.4cm.” Okay. “The total points for the exam need to be 100; percentages are not acceptable.” And on and on and on. It’s all just someone upstairs powertripping.
Hell, I found out last night that they had teachers make proposals for what to put in a new western literature textbook, and Edgar Allan Poe was rejected because he “wasn’t classical enough,” which is bullshit. The man upstairs just doesn’t like him, so he made an arbitrary decision; like all these other rules.
This is the same thing that my art and animation school friends go through with fuddy old school “AnIME iSn’T ArT” professors who took off marks or rejected grad school applicants for having anime style art in their portfolios. It makes me just as furious. Who fucking says anime isn’t art? Pop art is still art.
Anime is cool and i don’t think having some quality stuff in a portfolio should be death, but having seen my share of artists I sadly have to kinda side with most schools that when there’s a portfolio that’s basically only “anime” work, it doesnt usually demonstrate a very diverse mindset. That’s schools and programs aren’t going to cater toward that direction of work so it won’t be a good fit.
If someone is already good at anime style work, then they have some specific schools or directions they need to be going. If they aren’t good at it yet… It’s not a good sign. If they are good at anime drawings but want to get out and learn other stuff, then they need to demonstrate some ability to deviate from the established anime or comics or Tumblr pop work and show what they do in other mediums.
If your friends had diverse and varied works across a few different styles and the work demonstrated a good eye and good control and one or two anime works trashed their submission, I’m sorry about that. But admission does ultimately come down to know the audience and sell yourself to that audience. And know the Program and what you want to do.
Yes the bias from the established faculty is real, but what I’ve always heard, from teachers and other students who themselves did comics/anime work, is to learn what the school is teaching, be diverse, push yourself, and then apply your baller skills to whatever anime or pop art style you want on your own time.