Comment by gnfargbl
1 day ago
I have a medical condition (autoimmune hypothyroid, extreme edition) which I wasn't aware of, but was suffering from severely, during my University years. Waking up was extremely difficult for me and as a result I was often late. At the time I couldn't understand why I seemingly had a problem that nobody else did, and presumed I just lacked self control. Nope, I just needed (a lot) of medication.
Your Prof Ramsey would have penalised me for this unknown condition. This isn't behaviour to be celebrated.
You seem to expect the professor to give you a reasonable accommodation for an affliction you didn’t even realize you had. If you want to hold him accountable for his (unfair?) rules, you need to first hold yourself accountable for getting the disease diagnosed.
The world we live in, with the people we live with, require accomodations every single day.
Not locking a door allows the students who were delayed on the road by a car accident, as much as the disabled student who took five minutes longer than expected after falling down some stairs.
Every single person makes mistakes at times. If those are not absorbed by flexibility, then they go on to affect everyone else connected to the punished.
If the professor is delayed due to a tire puncture, should they lose their tenure?
It also allows the people actually in the class a lesson uninterrupted by random people for variety of good/bad reasons.
Most 90% of students is not late on any given day. Should they all be penalized for the actions of a few?
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>If the professor is delayed due to a tire puncture, should they lose their tenure?
This seems like a false equivalency. The student isn’t getting dropped from their degree program, they’re missing a class. If a professor is late, especially habitually late, I may not advocate for them losing tenure, but I’d certainly expect it to have a smaller impact like being brought up in a performance review.
> You seem to expect the professor to give you a reasonable accommodation for an affliction you didn’t even realize you had.
No. How could he? Instead, I'm pointing out the value of empathy, tolerance and flexibility.
I’m all for empathy, tolerance, and flexibility (to a reasonable degree). I also don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a professor to act on an assumption of illness when the person actually experiencing the symptoms does not hold that assumption. Your perspective makes it seem like the prof is privy to information about your health that you don’t have.
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Maybe we should just be a little lenient to everyone, on principle?
What of the ADD student who gets distracted when someone comes in late? What should we tell them. "Suck it up"
What of the daycare that's expecting you to show up and pick up your kids on time. Should we tell the workers to wait, because the guy replacing you at work was late. Then of course we tell the cleaners of the daycare to start their shift 30 mins later because they have to wait for the last kid to leave. Oh and the cleaners will have to stay 30 min extra to clean, so now we tell the people relying on them to wait. Or.. Or we tell the cleaners to work a bit harder so they don't take an extra 30 minutes..
So the 30min you're late messes up the day of not just the person expecting you, but all the people expecting them.
How about on principle anticipate that you're going to be late, and make an effort to arrive early. If you know you're late all the time, start giving yourself more time.
[flagged]
First, go read the HN guidelines and understand why your post should be reframed.
>how would you even know you had a condition and werent just a lazy ass?
If you are not able to know, how on Earth do you expect the professor to know you aren’t just lazy or unmotivated?
I’m all for giving people grace. But it strikes me as a weird take to expect people to go around assuming people have some grave condition that they don’t even realize to excuse them from all manner of aberrant behavior.
This is completely out of line. Calm down before commenting. Strong disagreement is fine but this style of communication repels discussion.
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It is baffling that you are claiming “can’t show up on time” is something professors need to work around as a reasonable accommodation.
In cases where a student shows up 10+ minutes late to a course and disrupts the lecture, what percentage of the time do you estimate the reason for tardiness is a diagnosed or undiagnosed illness or hardship.
Then maybe the easy solution is to make sure anyone showing up late doesn't disrupt anything? That accommodates everyone, is flexible, and does not unfairly punish anyone.
_THAT_ is flexibility.
Isn't it reasonable that we try to disrupt each other as much as possible as a default? It seems odd to force that responsibility onto another party. (ie it's weird to assume the professor is responsible for making sure another adult isn't disruptive)
> Your Prof Ramsey would have penalised me for this unknown condition. This isn't behaviour to be celebrated.
On the contrary, your anecdote is evidence of how this seemingly arbitrary behaviour can actually uncover real issues and prompt people to question and investigate.
Maybe people had ADHD and having students disrupt the class once it began made it hard to stay focused. The professor was making a reasonable accommodation for them and should be celebrated.
Why not. I mean if you're expected to come and relieve a co-worker at 5pm, because he has to go get his kids from daycare, and you show up at 5:30 so now the police are at the daycare collecting his kids (because he's waiting for you all the time)
It always baffles me. Make accommodations for your conditions.. So the 30 plus students are meant to have their time interrupted by a late arrival. I have ADD, so when in a class if someone comes in late, I get distracted and can't pay attention. Which person should this prof accomodate? Me with ADD or you.
The "make accommodations" is always argued by the few, against the needs of the many. It's self centred. If waking up is hard, go to be earlier, get a better alarm clock, pick classes later in the day. Make accommodations for your own disability.
My ADD has me working from home, with noise cancelling headphones. I accommodated my own-self.
You seem to think that if everyone were more empathetic, it would be possible to arrange our society so that people with serious un-diagnosed medical conditions never have to miss out on anything important.
As someone who is _often_ late, your inability to be there in time is not someone else's problem. Unfairly punished...gimme a break.
That's a common point of view, but when your disability is never someone else's problem, it becomes waaaaaay harder to manage. You should display more empathy to people that don't follow the norm.
Except in this case, there is no information to the other party that someone has a disability. So the default that we assume someone has a disability is what most people take umbrage with.
I try to be generous as much as is reasonable. I generally assume the person who cuts me off in traffic may have an urgent need, but vaulting every misdeed to an assumption that it's due to some unknown disability crosses into unreasonable territory, if for nothing else than it's probabilistically a bad assumption. Taken to the extreme, it becomes enabling for everyone who does not have a disability but gets away with bad behavior.
Its so strange to me that when it comes to college no one has any empathy whatsoever for students. Its so absurd.
Some people don't have empathy for students regarding this particular subject.
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