It is time to face the sad truth: people are terrified of me. I have no idea what I do to scare them but that’s the result.
A student I have had in my courses for a year and a half sent in an assignment a few hours late and accompanied it with a screenshot of the properties of the document showing the created and revised dates to prove he had done it on time but failed to send it in for technical reasons. The email was written in a self-debasing, groveling tone that really scared me. Given that I have never in my life refused to accept late assignments, I have no idea where this terror of me comes from.
Clarissa's Blog 
Humm, maybe it’s because of other teachers….
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Agree with David. As a student, I lived in terror that teachers would not believe my (true, legitimate) stories of why things went wrong
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I never disbelieve the stories students tell me or ask them for any proof. I believe that would be demeaning for everybody. I always tell them, “If you say this happened, it happened.” I don’t want to degrade myself by turning into some sort of an unpaid police officer.
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I think the reason why most people are afraid of you is because you have confidence, your blog has a lot of readers (support), and you are very logical on here. Maybe some people feel threatened by you?
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And so they should be! 🙂 Kidding.
I’m just always surprised by the difference in how people perceive myself and how I perceive myself. I see myself as a quiet, peaceful, gentle, soft-spoken, inoffensive, and mild person. But people laugh when I say this. They actually yelp with laughter.
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A friend once told me that there is the real me and then there is the online me. Two of them are just so different.
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I don’t think this means that the student is terrified of you. I think some students are just so trained to give excuses and provide documentation that it becomes a reflex. Like you, I don’t want to know why students are absent. They are adults: attendance is their business. And still, every semester, I am subjected to endless litanies of excuses as to why they couldn’t make it to class–even after I nearly beg students to spare me the excuses!
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Is there teachers who want to know why a particular student is not there?
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I’m not such a teacher. I have no idea what this knowledge would change. All that matters is that they are not there.
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But they exist for real, in college?
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I think more than half of my teachers required documentation if work was late or if too much class was missed.
One teacher at the beginning of the semester showed us a newspaper article about a man who was trapped somewhere in the woods for several days (he may have been forced to cut off a limb, I can’t remember), and said, “I would let this guy turn in a late paper. If you want to turn in a late paper, your excuse should be just as good as his.”
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“One teacher at the beginning of the semester showed us a newspaper article about a man who was trapped somewhere in the woods for several days (he may have been forced to cut off a limb, I can’t remember), and said, “I would let this guy turn in a late paper. If you want to turn in a late paper, your excuse should be just as good as his.””
– This teacher would definitely benefit from getting a life.
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I just saw this sentence in the description of a class next semester: “Class can only be missed two times, and only with a valid reason.” I wonder what the teacher would consider a non-valid reason and what actions s/he (can’t remember) would employ in response. Like, would I have to hand in a letter from my parents? Or swear I’m not going to do it again? Anything is possible.
This semester, I had a teacher who specifically indicated (through printed symbols, not less) on his attendance sheet whether an absent student had offered a reason for their absence or not. And he had an attendance sheet that covered the whole semester – but he brought a new, updated printout every week.
I find this kind of behaviour demeaning for everyone involved. And I know that if I was a teacher I couldn’t be assed to keep such close tabs on my students.
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I agree with you completely. I have no idea what the teachers think they will gain with all this policing.
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Helicoptering teachers?
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