I love the feeling I get when I open my syllabus at the beginning of the semester and underneath the absence policy it says after three absences, my grade will drop an entire letter. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Oh wait, it doesn’t.

 Why is it professors think they can punish my grade for when I decide to skip class? If I don’t feel well, then I’m not going to class. If I don’t feel well four times out of the semester and those four times happen to be during that class, why does my grade have to be punished for it?

Students should not be punished for not attending class if they are paying for it. We are paying the professors and they are punishing our grade in return. If a student is able to skip five classes and get A’s on tests and homework, then why are they being punished?

The worst is when the class consists of the professor lecturing students from a PowerPoint, word for word, that they are going to post on BlackBoard. Then they allow students to take the test on blackboard as well. What is the point of the class? I might as well be taking it online. There is no point for me to go to that class, yet the professor insists on sending around the attendance sheet, every single time.

I am paying for these classes so I should be able to attend them whenever I want. Most students go to class because they want to get good grades but if the classes consist of students having to teach themselves, then what’s the point? Professors, if need be, should really start a new system, such as if a student’s grade is below a B- or B or even C then they are not allowed to skip classes. If a student’s grade is above a B- then they can skip all they want.

In the real world, there are many careers where workers don’t have to physically go into work because they are able to do their work from home. The difference is they’re getting paid, we aren’t even getting paid to go to class. With the technology available today, millions of people are able to do work from home. It then becomes that person’s responsibility of whether they get their work done or not. In the end, what matters is if the person is producing good work. The same thing goes for college students. What matters is we are getting good grades because we are paying for it.

If it’s necessary to go to class, students are old enough to realize whether or not they can actually learn something from going. In the end, it’s the student who will pay for the consequences of not going to class. It isn’t up to the teacher to make sure we are getting good grades; students have to realize it is their responsibility to go to class when needed and to get good grades. I don’t know why students wouldn’t want to get good grades because we are paying money to go school and to get the most out of it. If students haven’t realized that yet, that’s their own problem.

The grade shouldn’t be determined by how many classes the students go to. The grade should be determined by how much work students put into the class.