Attendance Woes by Shrey Dhawan

Attendance is defined as the physical presence of a student in a class room with or usually without mental presence, decided by the saying of the phrase “YES SIR” in response to a number tagged to the individual by a predetermined systemic algorithm.

Attendance is a rather dramatic issue where i come from being an interplay of very strong emotions such as deceit, betrayal, heart-break, defeat, and treachery.

Deceit- is the most useful ally of the average student and manifests itself in the form of proxy attendance, or in simple words someone else answers for you. There usually isn’t much of a problem with giving proxy attendances but a problem arises when more than one person answers. (popularity has its problems )

Betrayal- when someone goes behind your back and tells the teacher that you gave proxy ( those bastards ).

Heart-break- when she cancels everyone’s attendance because no one could recall the name of the chapter she’s been lecturing on for the last 2 hours !

Treachery-attendance gets taken away because you sleeping and snoring too loudly, shouting in your sleep, drooled to an extent that your socks got wet, whispering too loudly or farting in a manner that is disruptive to the course of the class !

Defeat- when at the end of the year, you’re still short of attendance !

The attendance scene out here to be honest is pretty darn serious-

Firstly we have this all powerful Dr X ( name changed ) Who makes sure you come to class before he starts it or he fines you 500 bucks, no doubt it’s all done for a noble cause, in the sense that he donates the collecting at the end of the year to charity, but the ever-lasting retort…Sir I’m kinda poor, could i get some charity ? Or at least some form of diwali discount 🙂

The thing that teachers fail to understand is that students come to class because it’s air-conditioned, the seats are cushioned and it gives some of us guys…who fell asleep in the same row as a lady, the chance to say…hey pretty, we slept together ! (flicks hair like an old Indian actor )

In a perfect world teachers would be replaced by a violinist playing Cuban tunes that inspire the dreams of candy floss, Fun flips, Punjabi food, smooth roads, Mc Donalds ( all things we don’t really have in Manipal)…( note how the author chooses to not mention booze and Canadians etc…as we have plenty in Manipal)…(no racist intentions what so ever)

But secretly we’re all just waiting for that one moment of glory when she screams…you can get OUT if you don’t wanna be here…I’ll give you attendance if you want… because then I’ll get up in slow motion, smiling shamelessly at the OH SO envious ATTENTIVE students…swing my bag over my shoulder in the awkwardly dramatic slow motion style of the matrix and then stride towards the light coming from the door that leads to salvation, the freedom of man from the bondage of education, steady futures, assured incomes, logical thinking, social and economic progress…yes Mr Gilmore ( Pink Floyd ) ( refer the song we don’t need no education ) and then we’ll all march out of the class slowly humming the ants go marching one by one hurrah…hurrah !