Missed a final exam -- what happened?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I still have this nightmare many many years later.

I have these at least biweekly. Can’t find the room, wrong day, forgot to show up to class all term…. I finished school over 20 years ago and I can’t believe I still have these nightmares all the time!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I still have this nightmare many many years later.

I have these at least biweekly. Can’t find the room, wrong day, forgot to show up to class all term…. I finished school over 20 years ago and I can’t believe I still have these nightmares all the time!

I am forever and a day trying to remember my HS locker combination. WHY?! WHY is this what I’m doomed to dream about almost nightly for 20 years?

[Anonymous]

Another professor here. I will typically let students who accidentally miss an exam take it later that day or the next week. I don't want to ruin a student's transcript because of a silly mistake that I could just as well make myself.

[Anonymous]

I skipped the midterm by accident once freshman year. I didn't like the class and found it boring so started skipping every now and then. I came in thinking I wanted to be a history major because it had been great in high school and that class singlehandedly put me off. Forgot to check the syllabus dates and skipped the midterm. I was too ashamed to go to the professor and beg for mercy or make up a sob story, so I just did nothing.

I ended up with an A in the class. It should have been mathematically impossible. The professor was older and almost retired and all I can think is that when he didn't see my test to grade, he assumed he had lost my exam book or something, so gave me a high filler grade. I was too embarrassed to ask about it and kept my head down. I also stopped skipping classes and ended up as a bio major.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Omg!
I'm having flashback of freshman year. I was fully ready for a final. Had 2 hours to go and decided to put my head down. Big mistake. It ended with me leaping up of the bed, running across campus in my bedroom slippers, and joining the test which had already been in progress for 20 min. Still makes me sweat thinking about it.

Hope you DC is able to work something out, OP.

I’ve been out of college for 35 years and I still have nightmares like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DS has a final tomorrow at 7:30-9:30am on the other side of his HUGE campus. He is so worried about missing alarm, he said he hears it for his earliest class - which is 10:40am but worried that at 6:30am he may not. I said just turn it up really loud and tell your roommate to bug you if he hears it. Time to be adult - but secretly I am worried too!!

I was just chatting with my DC and he said he is happy he doesn’t have an early exam this semester, because he was so worried he would sleep through when he had one in the fall. He said he set about 6 different alarms.

[Anonymous]

My experience is that they allow make ups in undergrad, but we had zero flexibility in law school. Grades are so important they assumed that everyone was gaming the system.

In law school, a friend was hit by a car, with permanent paralysis, and was in a medically induced coma in the ICU for two weeks at the end of a semester and missed exams. She wanted to make up her exams at the end of the summer after she'd partly recovered. No dice. She had to retake the whole semester (with the full cost) and graduate late, putting her off cycle for law firm job, which is a huge deal in a bad economy. The same answer was true for a friend who threw out her back right before an exam and the friend who had a stomach bug and puked through the whole exam. Law schools have zero compassion.

[Anonymous]

Woke up 30 minutes late to the final. Ran to class while students were still taking it. Prof let them join and finish it in their office.

[Anonymous]

I taught at UMD for years. If a kid had been coming to class, participated in discussions, done all the other assignments, and was polite in how they asked for a new exam, I would always arrange it. I did it many times over the years. Mistakes happen and I understand that. If I had never seen the kid before (which does happen) or they had turned in every assignment late or not at all (which also happens), I wouldn’t offer a make up. I had a student in that last category once and her father called my department chair to demand I offer a make up exam. We both had a good laugh about that.

[Anonymous]

Well I hate that finals are never the same as when the class is. Very confusing esp for the adhd kiddos.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well I hate that finals are never the same as when the class is. Very confusing esp for the adhd kiddos.

If a class is an hour long but the final is three, how does that work?

[Anonymous]

As a freshman I slept through my first ever college final - an 8am bio final. A hallmate woke me up having just finished it quickly and said “Wake up! You slept through the test. But I noticed you weren’t there and talked to the professor saying you must have slept through your alarm and they said if you get there NOW you can still take it.” I hauled ass and it was fun…slow test takers were still there. She and I weren’t even really friends. Always grateful for that.

Once another time I wrote a great test essay in response to one of the books we read, walked out, and realized the prompt was about another book (I’d just liked the one so much I had it on the brain). I ran back to the professor and explained and she was like “Uhh, are you busy? You can write the real essay now.” So I did.

I was a good student. Those are the only first year of college blips I recall.

Now I’m the professor. I try to be kind and fair and reasonable. I will add that this is why it pays to speak up in class and go to office hours once or twice for a substantive reason: sometimes it’s hard to help a student if the first time you hear their voice or make eye contact or receive an email is when they ask for a favor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well I hate that finals are never the same as when the class is. Very confusing esp for the adhd kiddos.

If a class is an hour long but the final is three, how does that work?

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I still have this nightmare many many years later.

Me too! Or that I somehow forgot to attend every class of the term, and show up on the day of the final, unprepared.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well I hate that finals are never the same as when the class is. Very confusing esp for the adhd kiddos.

ADHD kiddos are offered to take their exams, with extra time, in a different location separate from their class as it is. That IS the accommodation.