Hello everyone:

Have you ever had a situation where you simply could not make it to class? You are a great student, always on time and prepared but this particular day you cannot make the class meeting. What can you do?

The first thing is to contact the professor and let him or her know your situation. I have had students who had a court date that they could not miss, but wanted to come to class.

Guess what? Sometimes professors teach more than one section of the same class and would rather have you at a different class meeting than have you miss the class entirely. I have had times when I was teaching three identical sections of the same class and was totally supportive of students coming to a different section, rather than not coming at all.

Things worked out fine. The students told me how surprised they were by the different class dynamics in the other section, but the lectures were basically identical so that worked out great.

Another suggestion: I had a very difficult class in my undergraduate program. I was a very good student but I just couldn’t “get” macroeconomics. My professor taught the same class three times a day and he gave me permission to attend as many lectures a day as I wanted to.  I went to at least two of them per day. It did help.

Best,

Dr. Sheri