Least favorite question...

...this time of year.

It's some variant of

"What do I need to do to pass the class?"

It is never, ever asked by someone who is actually passing, and rarely asked by someone who actually has a shot at passing.

And it always comes in the five minutes before a class starts, as I'm frantically gathering my thoughts and my stuff and the person has to know OMG NAOW what they need to do, so I have to plunk down, look up their grade, quickly decide whether just say flat out "No, you cannot pass at this point" or to give them some impossibility like "If you earned a 99% on the next exam AND the final, yes, you could pass."

The thing is, these are often people with a high proclivity to skip class. The ship of passing has already sailed; it sailed when they failed to hand in the third paper or when they earned a 35% on an exam because they were absent for the days that the important material was covered.

I admit I usually give them the impossibility rather than the flat-out "you can't, at this point," because I get tired of the quivery lower lips that start up.