Aw, fuck! Sorry!
Umm, yeah, I think I’ll agree with Missy2U in her agreement of kambukta.
That being said, the very least you could do is come up with a better excuse for being late than, “Oh there was this cute boy”. I certainly hope you didn’t tell your teacher that. I like Guin’s idea of seeing the nurse. Nurse’s always give passes. Or, like Cheesesteak said, just skip the whole class. Or you could just get your ass to class on time.
Regardless of your decision, you’re not 12 years old anymore. At least, I don’t think you are. Do they have social studies for 12 year olds? Anyway, if you’re old enough to walk across the street by yourself, you’re old enough to accept the consequences of your decisions, bad or good. Get over it and get to class.
Here’s the thing. We’re all talking as if it must be because she was late that she was marked absent. Well, if that’s the policy, he should tell her so. There’s no excuse for marking a falsehood on the attendance sheet that could harm the student’s life when there’s no policy of doing so.
I’d also like to say that if a certain poster is off limits for criticism, flaming or disagreement because of personal problems OUTSIDE the board having nothing at all to do with the SDMB or its posters, perhaps that should be in her sig or, alternately, he/she could not post until their skin was thick enough to take it.
Aunt? Is anyone else related to Ginger? Please speak up now.
I’d just like to clarify that my family comment was directed at the person who thought up the ‘no-reading’ punishment, and I wasn’t attempting to insult Ginger, Dave, and Co.
and Dave:
20 seconds (assuming this isn’t an under-exaggeration) may as well be 20 minutes. Where do you want to draw the line? Is a minute OK? Two? There needs to be a firm cut-off somewhere, and this cut-off comes after the period of time the school has already given to get to the next class. Magic already admitted that the lateness wasn’t due to insufficient time, so I’m not sure why you would shrug it off as ‘not something to worry about.’ Beware of an enabling attitude.
Well matt, what if the teacher really did make a mistake? Maybe he marked her absent when she failed to show up for roll call and simply forgot to change it to “tardy” when she finally showed up.
And she was late for the last two classes. How many other times has she been late to this class? Maybe the teacher got tired of excusing her chronic tardiness. I would certainly get annoyed if the same student were repeatedly late for my class.
Or maybe the teacher’s just an asshole.
Either way, it’s her fault. She should have been in class before the final bell rang. This isn’t exactly a new rule or anything.
Here’s my 2 cents:
Ultimately, you caused the problem by being late for class. Sure, the teacher should have noticed that you were there and/or gone back to the attendance sheet and corrected it, but he didn’t. And his error (if error it was) was only made possible by your error.
So IMO you shouldn’t be any more pissed at him than you are at yourself, because you are equally to blame for the fall-out. If he made a mistake – and I’ll admit it sounds like he did – it was one that only was possible because of the situation you created. And it sounds like you dealt with it and it all turned out fine.
But if I were your SS teacher, I guess my attitude would be that a person who is late to my class runs the risk of being marked absent. Your teachers do not have the time to revise the attendance sheet repeatedly as people straggle in; that’s why you’re supposed to be there at the bell. Since you caused the problem, I probably wouldn’t have apologized to you, either.
It does sound to me like your Mom was out of line, both by saying you couldn’t read as a punishment (truly whacked, IMO) and by refusing to talk to you. But I don’t see that your teacher was.
Jeez, just get to class on time.
I disagree, as another poster said, this is justification used for assinine zero tolerance rules and the like, an excuse not to think. Also, if I worked for an employeer so tight assed that 1 second late was considered 15 minutes, or an hour or whatever and my pay docked, I would quit on the spot. I am not a tool or a slave, I am an employee and a human being and expect to be treated with common sense, as an individual.
The whole “But Ginger is her AUNT!” business is getting really old, really fast.
We have lots of teens around here, with their fair share of angst. I don’t see why having a popular relative as a poster around here should get a poster a “Get out of the pit free.” card.
If magic8ball doesn’t want to be taken to task for stuff, she should post in MPSIMS; however, I have to point out that in this particular thread, it’s not m8b who’s complaining.
Can we just drop the whole “I know she has a tough life, 'cus I know her anut!” biz, and get on to the damn OP? Cheers.
Anyhow, m8b did your godfather give you your books and TV back (hopefully)?
I understand completely about the “Staring at the boy I like” thing. It’s a wonder I don’t short out my work computer with the drool when my beau walks by… 
Well, DAVE, I don’t think M8B has the option of “quitting on the spot,” since she’s not an employee, she’s a high school student. And I think her teachers probably know the cost of treating high school students, collectively, as “individuals” who exercise “common sense.” As I have said, it seems to me that leads to mutiple revisions of the attendance list as various “individuals” straggle in. And how much common sense does it show to make yourself late for your class – or your job – because you’re looking at a cute boy or girl?
If you had a job where you were giving to understand that one of the conditions of employment was that you had your ass in your chair at 8 a.m. – not 8:01 not 8 plus 20 seconds, and you could not manage to do that, then, yes, you should get a different job. And you shouldn’t blame your boss for your own inability to comply with the rules which you knew you were expected to follow.
Oh, and to all the crybabys whining about “the clique”, grow the fuck up, ok? Don’t project your feeling of inadiquacy onto an imaginary “uber-group” that somehow controlls things, you’re acting like you’re 12. Ginger hasn’t even commented here, and I commented on a specific aspect of the OP-20 seconds is not a long time- same as I would for any poster. JBJ, what the fuck are you talking about? Immune from criticism? Whose ass died you pull that out of, Brian Urlacher’s? 8ball is 15 years old and fully capable of standing and/or falling on her own two feet. Neither Ginger or myself has ever said otherwise, and the only thing we said in that last train wreck of a thread was “yea, she’s a good kid, we know her” which somehow got twisted and misconstrued to mean we were “protecting” her. We backed up one statemen of which we had personal knowledge, and that’s it. How empty and pathetic are your lives if you have to make up imaginary reasons to get upset? Bunch of pathetic, whiney, immature…
Hi Dave. I’m referring to several threads, one a few months ago where I was accused of being a ‘raving bitch’ to magic8ball and then THIS comment from Elenfair sealed it:
So we know her aunt, so it’s wrong to tell her she’s a shitty speller? Something we do to every shitty speller on the board? Give me a break.
J
Jodi, I agree, a schoolchild dosen’t have the options an adult does, obviously the child has to suck it up and not be whatever seconds late. What I was objecting to was the idea of “Well, get used to it now, because when you get out in the working world there are some real bastards and there is nothing you can do about it” Bullshit. If you let yourself be used or treated like that, you deserve all the heartache you get.
But Dave, everytime someone says, “Her life is hard, we know her personally” or “GingeroftheNorth is her aunt” it’s like saying, “Don’t criticize poor little magic8ball, her life SUCKS!” Boohoo, all of our lives suck at one time or another, and that absolutely does not shield us from the product of our own ignorance, intolerance, bitchiness, whining, what have you. It screams “immune to criticism”, IMO. And adding the fact that Ginger is her aunt… well, I don’t really see what good that does since I don’t give a shit who anyone’s aunt is, but some people obviously think it counts for something. I just think it’s a seriously poor excuse for a cop out and I’m not buying it.
If you can’t handle posting and getting replies without name-dropping, maybe you shouldn’t be here.
Don’t flame me, I’m related to Cyndi Lauper.
Dave,
So, to use your example, what happens to the person who is 15:01 late when 15min is tolerated? The inability to set a cut-off necessarily means that no-one is ever counted late in an absurd effort to accommodate people who progressively arrive just after whatever was previously acceptable. You are getting stuck on the concept that something as small as second could separate the timely from the tardy, and forgetting that there is no rule against arriving a few seconds early, thus granting you the buffer you are looking for.
Was your zero tolerance comment an appeal to the emotion invoked by such visions as good kids expelled for accidentally bringing a swiss army knife to school? I don’t see this as remotely similar. Please explain.
Hmmm. OK, JBJ, I see your point, but I would request that you note that WE ( Ginger and I ) are not requesting “special treatement” for magic8ball. She’s gotta stand on her own, and we’ve never pretended or asked otherwise. The fact that someone else is doing so shouldn’t be reflected back on us ( Which is what it feels like, a lot of the time ).
I am refering to the absolute horror with witch our current society seems to treat common sense. Anyone who would argue that 8:15:01 was the same as 8:00 is nuts. I am not suggesting an absolute. “You’re due at 8:OO”, someone walks in at 8:01 everyday, I’m not going to pitch a shit fit, I’m going to exercize my common sense and think “that dosen’t matter”. This would not be the case with someone walking in 10-20 minutes daily. Common sense. People who toe rules so hard that 20 seconds is a big deal to them are generally insecure and using the rules to offset their insecurities, usually in their position. They are generally not good bosses.
The zero tolerance thing is a flip side of the coin. The rules are made absolute with no exceptions, and the use of common sense is forbidden. Kids expelled for drawing a picture of a gun, thieves jailed for 20 years for stealing a slice of pizza… We all know what happenes. Common sense would prevent these absurdities in most cases.
I had a boss once who charged us $5 for every minute we were late, and $2 for every minute we were early for a meeting. He also paid up when he was early or late. We were to be on time. As he used to say, “Ten o’clock means ten o’clock, dammit.”
Oh yeah, the schools would be in great shape if we just started letting all the students decide how late they could reasonably be to class…:rolleyes:
There’s a reason for certain bright-line rules. Some make sense, some don’t. In schools, where one teacher is in charge of educating a class of between 20-40 students, we need some basic, unquestionable rules that help maintain order. Like, “be in your seat when the bell rings.” We’re not talking about a violation of her Constitutional rights here.
Obviously, no one here is arguing that bright-line rules with automatic, harsh punishments should be applied to every situation in life.
This is so obvious it should not have to be explained.
IT would seem to me, DAVE, that she’s being late enough to class to miss attendance. That’s too late, if its 10 minutes into class, or 20 seconds into class. I think it’s totally reasonable for the teacher to say “You must be here ON TIME because I spend about 10 seconds toting up attendance and then I . . . get ready for a radical idea . . . teach the class.”
If as important as attendance is being done in the first 30 seconds of the day, then you’d damn well better be on time, be it to school or to work.
It’s silly to me to talk about situations where being on time is not important and how rigid people might be to insist on timeliness in those situations. In this situation – unlike those – being on time obviously is important, and in light of its importance, it does not seem to me to be unreasonable for the teacher to expect the students to be on time or suffer the consequences.
I had a teacher my senior year who flat-out told us, if you are not in your seat when the bell rings, you will be marked absent. This was for a class right after lunch, and she just got sick of spending ten minutes every day waiting for people to show up and settle down. Leaving aside whether such rigidity is defensible, if I know that’s the rule and I still don’t comply and am therefore marked absent, whose fault is that, the teacher’s or mine?