Blog Entry 4: Can I Afford a Sick Day?

Hey, everyone. It seems like once again we are left with our blogs and our thoughts. For me, the thought that struck me is my ability to miss school. I am talking about all manners of missing school, whether the reason is due to sickness, death in the family, or even a "me day". The question this entry will be focusing on is can you afford to miss a day in college?

The average class size seems to be four classes in one semester, and so the question is reiterated in a different form, is it possible to stay an A and B student by missing a couple days to recuperate from some form of pop up on life? Taking four classes is about average for most students but the number can vary. Let's assume that every class is working independent of every other class, that seems pretty standard. Let's also say you have a moderate understanding in each class and are able to regularly get decent grades by most viewpoints. Your classes range from forty-five minutes to about two hours, for the sake of math, every class takes about an hour and fifteen minutes. Of the four classes, a test or project appear in two classes every two weeks. You also have an hour of homework from every class on top of that every day. That is effectively a bit more than eight hours of schooling every day. Easily said, that is a thing I like to call sadness.

On top of school, you are maintaining, more or less, a social life and connections with your family. You are doing such a good job of doing this monumental balancing act that your friend asks you to help the move. The simple question is, can you afford to do it? In the short, of course, you can help a buddy out, who wouldn't; however, in the long term you have effectively pushed back eight hours of your day. The test you will have to make it up, the project you will have to bust a move and finish it overnight and turn it in early, losing sleep. The notes will have to be snatched from a classmate, and then you will have to go over them alone. And as if that is not enough you will have to go over the homework in fits and spurts as you must stay constant with everything else.

Bam! After an entire week of bending over backward you are now back on track. Was that a sniffle? Poof, and now you have a fever and are sick. You'll probably be out of it for a couple days. That's about sixteen hours of school time used as recovery time. Can you afford to be sick? Of course, that's just, calculating, an additional two weeks or more of feeling terrible once you are recovered. Fun.
What I am getting at is that in college, you simply cannot afford to miss school. The average student cannot simply take a day off whether it be for personal health or a keg party, a different kind of personal health. College is competitive and keeping up with it requires sacrifices. You may miss Billy's party, or not be able to skim by on a group project. The choices made today will have an effect on you tomorrow. Possessing the mind that knows what you can accomplish or do is a necessity when circumventing school.