# Yes, I Care About Him More Than You



## Don Ricci (Jan 3, 2012)

Anyone else have the problem of having to tell people that yes, their hedgie (or really any of their pets) comes first?
I had a teacher actually tell me point blank that I should just drop their class if it wasn't The Most Important Thing™ in my life after I told them the reason I skipped their class was because Mitch was feeling under the weather and I wanted to make sure he was okay.
I even emailed them, did all the makeup work, and everything.
Sometimes I just want to shout that, no, I'm not actually sorry at all that my hedgehog is more important to me than school or work or anything else in my life, and if you want to get angry at me about it that's your problem and not mine. :evil:


----------



## smhufflepuff (Aug 28, 2008)

Be careful with that... While it's important to be there for the little guy, you also don't want to do something that jeopardizes your ability to take care of him in the future. You know, one of those horrible chains of events that goes something like: professor "rewards" your absence from class with a failing course grade, you spend a few $$hundred extra to re-take the course, hedgie needs to go to the vet, your vet money went to pay tuition, etc...

That said... I do understand how these little guys can tug at your heart strings and I've made some decisions to put their immediate needs ahead of others. Also, to think that one course is the most important thing in your life... like ahead of, say, your father dying, your child being rushed to the hospital, your spouse going to war/coming home from military service, etc... pretty pompous of the professor!


----------



## moxieberry (Nov 30, 2011)

If it were me, I just wouldn't give the reason. Or make up a reason that's not going to get scoffed at. College courses come with a certain number of "allowed" absences without penalty - depends on the rules of the university and how strict the individual professor is. In my experience it's been 3, sometimes 2. You don't have to give a reason for it - one prof of mine literally has said that you can use them for leisure days or anything you want. :lol:

That being said, as long as you weren't going over the allowed number by skipping this time, your prof has no right to make that kind of "suggestion".


----------



## Don Ricci (Jan 3, 2012)

The teacher that it was, any excuse, even none at all, would be scoffed at. They demanded to know why I wasn't there (and come on, it's not going to kill me to miss one class when it's half online anyway and I make up all the work) and god only knows I've come to class when I was god awful sick myself enough times, to the point where I've been repeatedly excusing myself from class to run to the bathroom and be sick, but that's pretty much par for the course in my life. There's a one point penalty for late work per item (out of usually 100 points per piece of work), and I just... have always put the people I care about (or in this case animals) before anything else in my life, usually it's not something as important as class, it's something like skipping out on hanging out with someone that I'd scheduled to hang out with a while back that day because my pet needs tho care, or that time I didn't sleep for three days straight because my cat was sick (granted I had no other obligations), but people always get unreasonably angry at me for taking care of my pets over paying attention to them, even when it's in a situation where as I could see it, something really bad could potentially happen and my pet could die (okay long shot but it's happened to me before), and they're not going to die over having to go see that movie alone.


----------

