First day of school, well at least for some of us. While most students have their first classes this week others seems to miss the first week. I can tell you guys something, professors hate when students miss the first week of school because in some way it shows them that their class is not important to you and believe me the last thing you want to do is to have a bad relationship with a new professor early in the quarter. Some students can’t help it to come late specially the international students. I can only speak for the international students since I am an international student.
The reasons why students do come late is:
Short break- We have around 8-9 days off from school and flying to places like Sweden takes a whole day and then you will have jet-lag for the next 2 days so you will end up of having 1 or 2 days of vacation but a really good advice to this student would be, do not go home over the spring break, explore this amazing country instead. Travel around in US or just take one week and relax at home. I believe that if it is not an emergency to go home then you should skip going back home for this short break.
Immigration Issues- This happen to me once and it was not nice. One time coming back to US from Sweden they told me at the airport that something was wrong with my student visa so I had to go back to fix it. I lost both money and time on it.
Missing a plane- This also happens to me once and this was during the winter time. My first winter break was over and I was heading back to US but when I got to France to catch my plane to New York they told me that my flight has been cancelled and the terminal will be closed due to the weather. Well that was fun.
The best thing you can do really is to email the professor as early as possible and tell them why you cant show up. Do not tell them this when you get to their class the following week because it will look like you made it up. Every time I emailed the professors in time I would get a response back quickly saying that they are happy that I had them informed about it.
