<p>agree with MommaJ(post 19)
In the hospital and released a couple hours later, is far different than I had pictured from post 1. I had guessed the Op had been hospitalized for days, and now I see not so.
“incredibly sick” and “now in the hospital”, led me to think near deathbed and admitted to hospital.</p>
<p>My S got sick last week, I brought him home from school (he’s just an hour away) and to the doctor and kept him over the weekend. Doc gave him a note for flu and bronchitis which he scanned and sent to two profs who’d scheduled their finals for the week BEFORE finals week (his finals week is this week). He had spoken to them before he came home though, I insisted.</p>
<p>Both were able to accommodate him. If they had not I’d have suggested he take that note to his advisor/freshman dean/whatever.</p>
<p>However, he missed the actual exams, not study time before them. That’s going to be a little trickier, IMO.</p>
<p>I advise always going to the dean of students when there is a crisis around exam time, if the professor isn’t accommodating. I had to go that route myself once. I desperately needed an extension on a final paper due to an extensive personal crisis and the professor had said no, I sent an email unloading on my advisor not really asking him to help but telling him what was going on, and he contacted the dean on my behalf and straightened things out for me.</p>
<p>That said, I am not sure why this situation is a crisis. I am sympathetic, it’s no fun to have your study time disrupted, but you should still have plenty of time to be prepared for a Friday exam.</p>
<p>In consideration of privacy laws and how busy doctors and other medical professionals are in emergency room work, I think it is unlikely that someone from there would be calling your school to say you were in the hospital. Also, anyone could call and say they were from a hospital, the school probably would want written documentation. I think you would have to give the appropriate person (teacher or adminstrator) at the school the discharge summary if there was one written. Even if someone from the hospital wrote that you had been in the emergency room in an evening for a few hours, that in itself would not likely serve as an excuse for taking final exams. You would be in the best shape for being excused from an exam if the doctor who saw you wrote that he/she ordered you to stay home on the day of the exam, or wrote that you were too tired from being in the hospital for taking a test, or that you needed treatment before you would be in condition to take your tests. I have taught undergraduate students in a university for many years and I think college administrators generally want to see that a physician has documented a medical reason why a student needs to be absent from school or have an extension on work rather than just a statement that a student was seen by a doctor. It is true that in some situations, the prof has the discretion to make a decision, but realize that there is no guarantee that the teacher will be sympathetic. Hope you feel better, and regardless of how this turns out gradewise, I hope you learn from the experience.</p>
<p>While there is some ambiguity to this situation, others are not ambiguous as far as timing and degree of illness goes. Our student had mono for freshman year finals in May. She was very sick and had blood work done which confirmed the problem. The health center notified the Dean and she was told that the professors would work with her. She powered through without utilizing accommodations, but reported a variety of responses from profs ranging from “No worries- we will sort this out later, go home and rest” to “I never make exceptions to my no make-up exam policy, but I know how much you have invested in this class, so just this one time I would allow it”. </p>
<p>That experience convinces me that any time a student is seriously ill, they should keep a copy of their medical records and visits, if not a letter documenting it, and if indicated, let the academic dean or at least their advisor know. Seriously ill or injured students may have trouble contacting multiple profs, going back forth about options, etc. and it is a helpful stop-gap measure to have a central person in authority set the ball in motion while lending the credibility to the circumstances that the prof’s post here mentioned, though clearly a student will be following up as soon as possible. A paper trail can be the deciding factor. The individual professorial discretion (even with a documented, confirmed illness in a high performing student) could be very de-moralizing and expensive. Let kids know this before they are sick. The flip side of this coin for me is every student’s responsibility to behave with integrity. </p>
<p>Good luck with your semester and health, OP.</p>
<p>I definitely would not skip the exam unless you had proof from someone, the prof, the dean, that your choice would be supported. My DD had to schedule surgery one term and there was one weeder course (ochem) which did not allow ANY misses of ANY exams for ANY reasons. I believe the story was that the prof had been sued at a prior school, but whatever the reason, do not risk a 0 mark without knowing you are allowed to skip the test.</p>
<p>Also, let this be your lesson for the future, never ever rely on last minute studying, review yes, major studying, no. If you can always be a week ahead, always be prepared, you will find it does you a wonderful service in school and work. No emergency will derail you.</p>
<p>D1 went to a large Uni. She had mono once and a very bad tonsil infection another time. Both times she emailed her professors and they were all very understanding and gave her extension for her papers and tests. She didn’t get penalized because she was sick. I would email and call your professors to get an extension.</p>
<p>My brother is a college professor at a large public university. As stated in his syllabus, he has a section on his blackboard where students can publicly or privately list why they were not in class on any given day. If the student posts, it will show up as a missed class for the whole class to see. He does not take attendance. It is an honor system and if there are grade problems, or problems with missed classes, he can refer to the blackboard attendance to see if the students are posting the absence. He said he has had few issues doing it this way because the students sort of keep themselves and each other accountable.</p>
<p>In a very subtle way, cormom has communicated an interesting thought.
If the public posting described was in effect for the Op, s/he might post:
I was sick Tuesday, spent 2 hours in the hospital; so I can’t take finals Friday.
Interesting.</p>
<p>He has had very few problems using this system. Anything a student wants to post they can about the reason - if they do not want to they do not have to post anything or even mark that they are absent as no attendance is ever taken. They just need to mark their absence if they would like special consideration for things to be turned in late or to delay an exam and they can talk to him when they return.</p>
<p>I would always contact your college office in situations involving illness in which you miss a final exam. When I was a freshman, I came down with mono during the last week of classes as well as another guy living on my hall. I originally thought I had no choice but to take my scheduled finals, but when I spoke with a faculty member in charge of my dorm, she encouraged me to go to the College office and tell them about my situation. The college office then emailed my professors with medical documentation and I made up my finals in January without any problems (other than having two incompletes on my transcript which were replaced by my grades after I took the finals).
The guy on my hall did not go through the college office and instead sorted things out directly with his professors, providing them with needed medical documentation. However, because he missed three finals, he had three incompletes and was put on mandatory leave which caused the system to drop all of his classes and essentially locked him out of his dorm when he returned from break. So even though his professors were fine with him making up the finals after break and everything turned out okay in the end, he had to spend a week or two dealing with bureaucracy in order to reverse the mandatory leave.</p>