::A Geek in Korea::

I got an astounding request from a student today. There were several students that I had never met during the entire semester in my class. If they had no written excuse or way to explain the situation, they failed. Students that don’t show up to class ever better have a damn good reason for missing those classes if they expect to get anything other than an F. The students that got jobs and needed excused absences got alternative assignments that made up for the grades they missed. The alternative assignments earn you the excused absences. Without the alternative assignments, you automatically fail when you miss 10 classes (33% of the class total).

This is the informal policy of the office, and I think it is more than fair. If you get a job, you prove employment then you can pass even if you miss class by working on your own time. This requires an agreement by both the professor and the student. It all needs documentation to prove they have a reason to miss class and earn the right to alternative assignments, of course. This does put the responsibility on the student to explain to the teacher why they missed class, and have documentation to back up their claims to mitigate fraud. With this sort of reasonable policy in place, what could go wrong?

I had a student show up today, a week after my final grades have been submitted, asking to pass a class. I’ve never seen him before. He has no recorded grades for me, or the professor I replaced. He never attended any of my classes. This isn’t all that unbelievable, as I took over for someone in the middle of the semester. There were a few other students that either dropped my class, or never showed up for my class. The amazing thing was that this student never showed up for the FIRST half of the semester either. I have ONE recorded attendance in an ENTIRE semester starting from the second week of class. If this student showed up the FIRST THREE CLASSES that would be all he did. The first week of attendance didn’t even get recorded, so I can’t even be sure he showed up more than once, as I wasn’t even his professor then. He didn’t show up for his midterm, his final, his group project, or any of the other classes besides perhaps the first three classes if he is being honest. Maybe he only showed up for one class total, maybe three. It didn’t matter, as he had failed for not having a grade, nor having excused absences.

HE EXPECTED TO PASS THE CLASS by attending one recorded session during the semester! ONE CLASS! What could he possibly be thinking?

He said that he had a verbal agreement with the other professor that he would have a job that prevented him from attending all classes for the rest of the semester. He told the person I took over for that he had a job, so he needed to have his absences excused. He claimed that the previous professor agreed to this arrangement. He didn’t mention any alternative assignments, or work he had been doing outside of class with the professor that made up for the grades he missed. This is highly unorthodox and goes completely against the office policy. Why would my predecessor agree to this? He provided no paperwork to back up his claims, or showed me any work he did. He got no one to verify his claim independently. He has no proof to his claim, and couldn’t even prove he was employed at the moment.

He simply stopped coming to class thinking that his spoken agreement would be enough to get him through a class. Of course he didn’t know that the professor he talked to would be leaving at that time, and that I would be replacing him half way through the semester. He didn’t email, call, or follow up with this for the entire semester, and when he finally checked his grades and saw that he got an F in my class he was shocked. He didn’t even know who I was, and had no way to contact me. He called my director in anger and DEMANDED a grade change immediately. He was yelling over the phone and was incredibly stubborn about it from what she told me. He demanded to speak to me in person to talk about this issue. I had to come in during my own vacation to deal with a student that couldn’t be bothered to show up to class more than once?!

His only chance was that I could find some independent verification of his spoken agreement with the notes my last teacher left me. I had notes or messages documenting four other working students, but this guy was not on the list. The past professor was very organized, so for this student to have NO proof of his claim anywhere is simply impossible to believe. The director has gone the extra step of contacting this professor outside the country to try to verify this student’s story. I’m skeptical that anything will change.

I had to wait for him to show up today, and I had to go in during my vacation to deal with him. He was late to his meeting, then when he showed up he spoke no English. My director and I explained that he had the burden of proof that he had made any sort of arrangement about his grade. He claimed that he had explained to the professor about the job, but perhaps he hadn’t said it clearly so maybe the professor had misunderstood. This means he was even harder to take seriously than before. Who would make a verbal agreement in a language they aren’t comfortable speaking and not check back in to make sure they were understood?

It was even worse. I’m pretty sure that he had said that he was uncomfortable speaking English, so he had proposed this arrangement that got him out of all work for the rest of the semester IN KOREAN after class, and was trying to complain that the professor was in the wrong for not writing it down and understanding what he had said. According to this student, the burden was on the former English professor to prove he hadn’t told him about his job, thus his absences.

He was there in the meeting saying, “Oh, I know I didn’t show up the entire class, and I did nothing to earn a grade whatsoever, but I thought we could work something out. Perhaps you could give me some sort of activity or exercise I could complete right now that would let you ignore all of that and help me out. I want you to devise and grade it on your own vacation time to me, a student you’ve never seen before, because I need to pass this class I attended once. That’s the reasonable course of action in this situation for us, right?”

The director and I said we would take his idea seriously (not really) and email the past professor to see if there was an unrecorded agreement made we had never heard about before. If we don’t hear back from the other professor, he fails. If we get a notification that there is some huge misunderstanding, he might get a chance to earn some sort of grade if he can somehow make up all the work in the entire semester in the time before the class scores become final. That’s if he can prove he is employed, and that he started his job when he said he did to excuse his absences. Otherwise he will automatically fail for missing too many classes. I walked out of the meeting after fifteen minutes because I couldn’t be bothered to waste any more of my vacation time dealing with him.

I’ve never met a more irresponsible student trying to get something for nothing that wasn’t in elementary school. It’s astounding that he could look me in the eye and try to ask for a passing grade for literally showing up ONCE to class. I thought I had some stories to share before I became a professor. This one still blows me away the more I ponder the audacity of it all.