Luck Is Not On The Syllabus

My second year of college, I was in a lecture-style class with about 90 students. Our professor was known to be extremely strict about late work. She blatantly refused to accept an email submission of any papers, and the only time she allowed us to turn in our printed papers late was if the university as a whole was shut down for some reason at the time the paper was due. (We were in Minnesota, so unexpected snow and winter weather closings were a thing).

One time, our professor ended up cancelling class the night before a major paper was due, because of some sort of minor emergency in her own life. I had another class in the same building right before her class, so since I already had my paper ready to hand in, I ended up leaving it in her office mailbox after my first class, so I wouldn’t have to worry about it for a few extra days.

The next class, when most of the other students tried to turn their papers in – our professor refused to accept them. Several students tried to complain to the department dean about it, but the dean pointed out the fact that, in our professor’s syllabus, she had written something like, “If I [Professor] am unable to hold class for any reason, and the university is open, all papers should be left either in my office mailbox or with the department secretary, to be collected by me when I return to campus.”

Moral of the story: pay attention to the syllabus that your professors print out for class! In my case, I was just extremely lucky, because I had only ever skimmed through the syllabus before this incident, but even I will acknowledge that luck can only get you so far.