Arrrgh, sickies

I think they probably need to shut down campus. I have SO many students out sick. I got "official" word this morning that one of them has H1N1.

The biggest issue is that this throws a giant wrench into exam-giving. I will have to write make-up tests for everyone who's out sick.

(And I still HAVE a couple people who begged, pleaded, brought doctor's/lawyer's notes so they could make up exam 2 who still have not. I get REALLY annoyed when I go to the trouble to write a make-up exam and people can't be arsed to take it).

The thing that gets me, is I don't know for sure who's for real and who's shamming (well, unless they bring notes...and we've been told some doctors are not giving notes because of the "paperwork overload").

This is an effing nightmare. As is the distribution of the vaccine. I've been as much as told I won't be able to have it, seeing as I'm not in any of the valuable highly susceptible populations. Even though I have asthma and am around breeding grounds of virus and bacteria (aka students) daily.

So if I get sick, I get sick, and I have to try to take care of myself, because I live alone and I can't think of anyone I'd be willing to put at the risk of catching the flu from me to ask to come and take care of me. (I could DIE. I could DIE ALONE IN MY HOUSE and no one would know until I started stinking. That scares me.)

(And I hate to say it, but: expect more of the same if we happen to wind up with single-payer, government-run health care some day. More delays. More cock-ups. More people being deemed not-sufficiently-significant-to-be-treated.)

Some days I'm teaching to classes that are half full. Now, in some cases - like on Fridays - I suspect the "half full" is 'cos some of the guys are out in the deer woods. But other days...well, either lots of people are taking advantage of sleeping in, or I have lots of people out sick. This is going to be a lost semester for a lot of folks, whether they have gotten sick or whether they are taking advantage of the newly liberalized attendance policies.

I expect to have a lot of people crying poor in my office the last week of classes, because they did not realize that skipping class could lead to failing. And I will have ZERO sympathy. All of my sympathy is being used up on the genuinely sick people, and it's being burned up by the people who WERE sick but who are now not lifting a finger to try to get caught up.