Tuesday, March 23, 2010

When a heifer goes down...

There's something new every day. Yesterday I had a student come to me in tears because she just got a call from her dad back home that her heifer went down. Her prize show heifer. And she had to leave and wanted to take the exam later. Huh. Sure. Just let me know when you get back. And good luck with that.

I mean, I have extended an exam for someone who had knee surgery and another student who just didn't show up and told me there was an emergency half-way through Spring Break. I let them talk me into a Word Bank and using a note card. All that accomplished was a severe lack of studying and the worst grades on an exam yet. But they can't blame it on me :-) I even let students yesterday talk me into giving them two extra days to study and I am taking time out of my rather busy schedule to babysit them while they are taking the exam on Wednesday afternoon instead of Monday afternoon. And I guarantee you they will do worse than the students who took it yesterday.

I am a very accommodating professor. I could probably win an award for being so accommodating. It would say "Professor Push Over" :-) Not really...but I understand that life happens. I figure that if I can work around the stuff in their lives, then they will work around the stuff in mine. Like skipping a lecture yesterday because I just couldn't talk.

(For those of you wondering what a heifer is, it is a young female cow, specifically one that is probably bred at this point and will give birth at the end of the summer and start milking...a dairy cow if you will. She is important because a good show heifer and her progeny can bring anywhere from $3,000 to upwards of $50,000 and beyond...now you know why she was crying...not to mention that these kids have their lives and sometimes their educations invested in these animals...they are not just pets...they are hard-working members of the family in many cases...but that will be another post someday...)

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