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Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Finals: another horror story

I decided to share another horror story of finals, since I'm watching my mom and brother this finals week while I've got no homework of my own to do.

Or, well, it's sort of a horror story of finals. It's about the final weeks of a term. And I did show up an hour late for one final.

~ ~ ~

My first term at Portland Community College (PCC) had gone fairly well. Sitting in classrooms was a bit strange for me after I'd been homeschooled for so long, but I made the transition gracefully. I'd even gotten over my fear of the strict writing professor, once I discovered that he had a sense of humor.

Then two weeks before finals, I got sick. I tried pushing my way through it, and insisted on going to school despite how bad I felt. Until...

...early Friday morning I got so sick that I fainted.

I'll spare you the details of my fainting and how sick I was. Suffice to to say that I was so sick that I couldn't really do any homework at all for a few days. At least through Sunday, as we entered the week before finals.

(It isn't really relevant to the story, but I do want to mention that I turned 18 that Monday. It was the day I started feeling human again.)

I think it was a couple more days before I was able to return to classes, which was maybe mid-week before finals. One thing quickly became apparent: I could not possibly manage all my homework. After being so sick, even for a few days, it was an impossible task. But, out of my three classes, I could manage two of them. Or so I thought. So, which class would be the most difficult to cope with, and professor should I ask to cut me some slack?

I chose my (no longer so scary) writing professor. Probably because his was my hardest class. I e-mailed him, explained that I'd been really sick, and asked for just a couple extra days to turn in my final paper.

My (actually quite wonderful) writing professor shocked me by saying that he would give me an Incomplete, and said I could take a whole extra week to turn in my paper.

Things still weren't easy for me. While I was busy worrying about my writing class, I wound up missing some homework assignments for my music class. I'm not sure if I forgot the homework or if it was assigned during classes that I missed. Then (probably because of missed classes) I didn't realize that the music final started an hour before the regular class time.

Imagine arriving to your final exam an hour late

In the end I got two A's and a B that term, the B being in writing. So I guess showing up late to my music final actually wasn't a problem. Still, my heart may have stopped momentarily when I realized what I'd done.

2 comments:

Debra She Who Seeks said...

Yikes! That's every student's nightmare!

Dancing With Fey said...

And it happened my first term.