I swear college was way more lenient than high school. That's not necessarily a bad thing - high school prepares you, but they also make it sound like they're the lenient ones and your college professors will literally stab you for being late.
"THEY'RE NOT GOING TO ACCEPT ANY EXCUSES IN COLLEGE! YOU NEED CONSTANT DEDICATION!"
My professor: "I'm writing this email to all of you to let you know that my wife and I got a new kitten and I'm taking the week off to play with him. So class is cancelled and I'm probably going to cancel the exam as well and give you all an A because I don't give a fuck. Here's 9000 pictures of my kitten."
I had a professor warn us on the first day of class that we should check our email before classes in the winter since she likes to go skiing, so you never know when classes will be canceled.
Most of mine were chill as hell. It was the grad students teaching classes that were hardasses because they were either still really passionate about their field or had something to prove.
Depends on what you went to college for. I was a liberal arts major. I'd imagine STEM isn't as lenient.
Gonna depend a lot on what you study, the first semesters in a lot of STEM fields have daily or weekly proof of work requirements. I thought it was much harder than high school, but I also decided to study something mathematical despite being bad at math, so idk.
Yeah this wasn't my experience. Grading systems were automated, professors were generally robots, and the work was very difficult. I once had a TA though that didn't care as long as you got your work in by the end of the semester, but that wasn't the norm. I also got lucky with one of my TAs but that was like winning the lotto, especially in STEM.
Yup, I hated the fear they instilled. But nope, HS in the states basically threatened CPS if you miss more than a few days. They get their funding based on who is present. Hence why they took roll every day. Student stays home sick? That’s less money for the school.
In college, professors don’t give a shit if you show up or now. They’re getting paid regardless and the school already took your tuition. I’m sure any university would be happy to take anyone’s money and they not show up.
There's attendance verification checks for federal financial aid purposes now for higher ed. Some things are applied differently school to school, but it is something they are supposed to be doing.
As someone who works in Higher Ed financial? Fuck no, because federal aid pulls itself if students don’t meet their minimum threshold, and people don’t understand the concept of the fact that they’re paying for a seat in the classroom not on a per-session basis.
If a student doesn’t earn their awards, we don’t get to keep them. They go back. Yes this includes private scholarships too.
In college it was ok if I got to class 5 minutes late because I was getting cheerios and milk at the cafeteria and then I ate it at my desk and literally no one cared. I asked!
We had a university prof who told us when the essay was due and you had a week after that without penalty to hand it in. Youd be surprised how effective that was as getting it in without deductions
I once brought in an assignment on a floppy disc, in the mid 2000s. Teacher didn't know what to do with it, they tried to pull the file out and it was 'mysteriously' corrupted. Like someone opened a word doc as a text file and deleted a few strings. But hey, it's not my fault the recently renovated computer lab was too advanced for this ancient technology since it's 'all I have access to at home.'
It has to be used in extremely sparingly, but more than once I "accidentally" forgot to attach the paper or attached the wrong one when uploads onto Blackboard started
I manually corrupted an empty word file and pretended that I had worked really hard on a paper only to have the file "accidentally get corrupted." It worked, but that's definitely a one-time trick lol
I would just open my current favorite song (as a .mp3 file) in Notepad, delete lines until it got to roughly the same file size as a Word document, then save it as a .doc and email it/upload it to Blackboard.
I only did this maybe four times in my college career, and never more than once with the same professor.
Confession Time: I did that too, except it was a PowerPoint PRESENTATION that I had to give. Because I was going through mental crisis at the time (hi bipolar accidentally treated with SSRIs) I ran out of time and didn't actually finish the presentation and was absolutely not prepared at all. Because I was too embarrassed (and insecure, and confused, being 18 was great /s) to admit I was having a mental breakdown to literally anyone at the time, I made "corrupted" PowerPoint file, and walked up to present it in class that day. And, like, I made like, a whole show of it too and acted all embarrassed in front of god and everyone, but it worked and I got a 48hr extension and just gave my banger presentation two days late.
Reminds me of the one time when I had to write lines (I will not talk in class) because one girl in our class decided to talk in class in junior high and I was very, very pissy about having to do that. Instead of just writing the 100 lines I designed a font of my handwriting and figured out how to use a printer to print it onto lined notebook paper.
I once “forgot it was due today” and said I’d slide it under his office door after my next class. I then skipped that class and wrote a rapid fire 6 page paper. Got a B.
This reminds me of the time I unilaterally gave myself an extension.
Essay was due on Friday before 5pm. A notice went up last-minute on the door of the office where you had to hand it in saying:
"Closed Friday afternoon for departmental meeting. Push any submissions under the door."
The Spanish department were known for socialising well and often, so this "meeting" was no surprise. A Spanish department in an Irish university made up of Spanish people and Irish people, you do the maths. I took this to mean that I now had until 6am Monday morning to push my essay under the door.
Take the weekend to write the essay. All went fine. I wake up early on Monday. Push the essay under the door at around 6. The little window of the office opens and there's the secretary, and my instinctive outburst was "Oh my god! Do you live here or something?" She picks up my essay off the floor, gets the date stamp, looks at it and says "Still has Friday's date on it, so we're all good". Stamps it, and then winds it on to Monday's date. We all had a deep love for this woman, and this was just one example of why.
I forgot about a paper once and told the professor I had trouble printing it. He said I could email it to him before 10pm. I ran back to the dorm after class and knocked that baby out in an hour. It was a 5 pager. I had not read anything and still got an A. This is how my ADHD can benefit me sometimes lol
Or “accidentally” submitting a corrupted file and then writing the paper before the professor was able to open it - “Sorry not sure what happened with my computer. I’ll send another copy just to be sure”
You gotta send an email without an attachment 5 minutes after it was due saying "sorry but blackboard wouldn't let me submit for some reason" then when you're done writing it a few hours later you send it in an email saying "sorry! I forgot to attach it to the last email."
Or you make a word document, save it, open it up in text editor, delete some stuff, resave document and send. Its corrupt and gives you extra time or a lazy teach just gives you full credit
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u/compassrosette Aug 10 '26
6 hour before it was due.