Illustration by William Rerick/The Dakota Student.

I have always struggled with the idea of a class attendance policy. You all know what I’m talking about — the “miss this arbitrary number of classes and get dropped a letter grade” phrase that has a tendency to pop up in syllabi in college. I understand the logic behind the policy but am frustrated with the practice.

I’ve had a lot of health problems in my life. Being sick has been my norm ever since I was a toddler. Because of this, I have missed large amounts of school ever since kindergarten. I don’t enjoy being sick, and I don’t enjoy missing classes — even if I don’t like the class I’m missing. Skipping class just to play hookey is not only a waste of my time, but it’s disrespectful to the class and to the teacher.

But sometimes, for whatever reason, life gets in the way. Maybe you’re like me, and you’re constantly sick. Maybe you need the extra time to finish homework for another class and are forced to prioritize in the worst way. I don’t know your situation, but I understand your struggle. When a number of absences dictate the grade you receive, missing class needlessly becomes a gigantic stressor.

I understand why attendance policies are in place, especially in many of my humanities courses. These classes rely on discussion, and to understand the material, you often must be in the classroom. Active participation, not just attendance can definitley aid the learning process. However, I’m not talking about participating. The students I’m addressing here are the students who are active in class — the students who don’t want to miss class but occasionally have to. Sometimes this exceeds the number of allowed misses.

Attendance policies then serve no real purpose. They are the hoops, and we are the trained dogs. If school is about grasping and understanding concepts, attendance policies assume we all learn via discussion.

But we’re not all extroverts who thrive on group discussion. Some of us get far more from lectures or reading the material than we do from discussing it with our peers. Everyone learns in different ways, but this is where attendance policies come in — they force us to conform to a way that may not ever work for certain students.

These policies also reward us for trying rather than learning. I don’t care how hard I tried to grasp 2+2=4; if I still can’t get that by the end of the semester, I don’t deserve to pass — whether I attended all the classes or not. The same goes for the inverse. If I understand the equation, why should I fail because I missed one too many classes?

Many teachers are happy to adapt to the policies as they see fit, but the easiest way to help these stretched-thin students is to get rid of the attendance policies all together. The students who care will still be active in class and will still communicate with the teacher when problems arise. The end result will be only slightly different; the slackers will still be easy to pick out, but good students will not be punished for missing an arbitrary requirement.

I understand that an attendance policy may be preparing us for “the real world” — a scary, overused term I also disagree with. As many like to say, how are you going to hold down a real job if you can’t make it to class?

Here’s the thing: “Real jobs” are changing. More and more options I see on the job market are less about being at work from nine to five and more about getting the work done by a certain deadline. Maybe this is because I’m only trolling around the humanities job postings; maybe this is different in other disciplines. But the fact remains: Most of the careers I’m looking at when I get into the big scary “real world” do not give a lick how many hours I spend in the office. They only want the results on time.

If school is more about preparing us for the real world, then attendance policies do not make the cut.

Kjerstine Trooien is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at kjerstine.trooien@my.und.edu.