2/19/09

The shoe is on the other foot


One of the greatest parts of college is the freedom to get up and leave whenever you want.  It is not like grade school where you needed hall passes and crap like that.  If I am sitting in a class and I want to leave and grab something to eat before class is over, I have every right to do so.  The professor will not even be upset about it...most times.  Also, I used to love it when the professor would not show up in the 10-15 minute window.  Everyone would sign their name to prove that they were there then leave.  That was such a good feeling.

"That must be why your grades were so bad.  You were too anxious to get up and leave instead of sticking around to possibly learn something.  Congrats on being an underachiever."

I do not make the rules.  It was my understanding that after a certain amount of time, if the teacher did not show up then we were allowed to leave.  Who am I to go against the rules?

"When I was in school I stuck around an extra 5 or 10 minutes just to make sure that the professor did not come."

If I recall, while I was in class, you stayed at home and slept.

"Well.......I WOULD'VE stuck around.  Going to class with you was boring anyway.  But I was always right by your side the second class was over. You can't deny that."

Right....Anyhow....

The worse thing about the 10-15 minute late policy is that most times the teacher was just running late, and you would be hit with the rush of disappointment when you saw him/her walk in the door.  You would always think 'Dang, just a few more minutes I could be back at home getting drunk'.

Now that I am a teacher, I get to disappoint my students the same way.

Take today for instance.  My class starts at 10:10, and I woke up at 10:03.  I knew I was going to be late, but I had not clue HOW late.  (Good thing I took a shower the night before, because I had no time to take one this morning)  I knew that the window was 15 minutes so I had until 10:25 to get there.  I wish I had a camera to capture the emotions on my student's faces when I walked in that class at 10:23.  There was anger, disappointment, frustration, every emotion that you would expect when someone does not get what they want.  Like that kid whose parents would not let him get a paintball gun, even though he had the money to pay for it and plenty of things to shoot. 

**AHEM** **COUGH** **COUGH**

 MOM!!!!! DAD!!!! 

**COUGH** **COUGH** **AHEM**

I do not know what it is about causing that kind of disappointment.

But I like it.

~sTeW~

3 comments:

Niki McNeill Brown said...

LOL I can imagine the look on their faces as they were packing up their stuff to go and u walked in the room....

Lina said...

And here I was, thinking that Douglas was the evil villian, when all this time it was you Stew.

Dre' Leon said...

lol...i definitely remember the 10-15min rule.

but i had it a little more defined then that...for instance if the teacher did have their ph.d then it was 15...but if he/she didn't have a ph.d then it was 10...lol

and i stuck w/ that rule all the way through college...

so i was in your class i would have been bounced on you...