Students should be held accountable for attendance

Mar. 28, 2016

Rachel Librach
[email protected]

As an adult, college students believe that they should be able to decide everything for themselves, including when they should and shouldn’t go to class.

But attendance policies can prove to be more beneficial than students might believe.

In elementary school, teachers take attendance to make sure kids don’t wander off during recess. In middle school, attendance keeps kids from getting into mischief. And in high school, attendance policies gave students a sense of responsibility and consequence for their actions.

In college, tracked attendance gives students a sense of what they should expect in life after school, so take the initiative
now and commit to your classes.

As a part of being an adult, attendance policies are meant to simulate a work environment.

If you don’t show up to work on time or simply not at all, it will be worse than just receiving a bad grade for the semester.

You will be fired.

The cold, hard truth is that showing up for what you commit to is a part of life. Even for classes you only took to meet the credits, show up.

We sometimes have to do what we don’t like, and we better get used to it now, because the severity of the consequences only get worse.

If you are not in college to learn, why are you paying for classes? All you’re doing by skipping a day is wasting your own time and money.

If classes were like a job, and professors treated students like they were their employees, so many people would be fired on the spot and asked to drop the class.

College is not a right; it’s a privilege.

You are given this opportunity to better yourself, so why not take the advantage by simply showing up to class?

Attending class is more than just a check mark next to your name on the attendance sheet. You are developing a work ethic that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

There will be days that you don’t want to go to your job, or you know the information talked about at the meeting will be absolutely pointless. But if your boss expects you to be there, you better show up 15 minutes early.

If you’re willing to make that effort for your superior, why not start now, and set expectations for yourself to show up to
your classes?

You might learn something tomorrow that surprises you. Then, you will be grateful for attendance policies after all.