Is coming to school under the weather worth it?

Being responsible for your classmates and your classes

By Talon staff writer

To go or not to go, that is the question. Students are faced with this dilemma whenever they aren’t feeling well on a school day; what is the criteria for being sick enough to stay home and where do the consequences of missing class outweigh the benefits of taking time to recover and get healthy?

With flu season well underway, there are many opportunities for students and staff members to get sick.

Everyone understands that this is an unfortunate but unavoidable aspect of being in such close contact with other people on a daily basis, but few people stop to think about how their decisions regarding their health and academics affect others.

While some students still look for any chance to miss school, there is a growing number of students who attend school even when they’re sick because they are afraid of falling behind in classes.

“You don’t know what you missed and you come to school the next day and you’re like ‘Oh, I don’t know any of this,'” said sophomore Claire Loes.

Senior Taylor Besser agrees.

“I know it’s not a good idea but especially last year I took four AP classes and I knew that missing a day of class would set me so dramatically behind that it would be worth it to lose a little sleep, come in sick and push through the day rather than miss class and be behind for weeks to come,” said Besser.

Many other people feel this way, and teachers are more sympathetic to the issue than students may think.

“If you are incapable of performing as a student and your illness distracts classmates, stay home,” said senior English teacher Kristofor Sauer. “If you’re contagious, stay home.”

This does not mean that students should look for excuses to stay home from school, just use good judgement.

“Be responsible about your illness,” said Sauer. “If your illness is simply hindering you [rather than making you incapable of learning], buck up and come to school. It’s important. Your parents pay a lot of money for you to go here.”

We at the Talon agree that being responsible about being sick is key. This includes being proactive about getting caught up right away after being sick rather than waiting weeks to worry about it (which gets less sympathy and willingness to help from teachers) and taking initiative to stay on top of things, which could include emailing a teacher the day of staying home to find out what will be discussed in class that day, what will be assigned and how to go about getting back on track.

This type of approach will increase student credibility with teachers as well as being beneficial to the student.