I wonder if if I were a teacher, whether I'd remember my own problems and have compassion or will I be like 'well, Susie had 11 children and a broken leg and she got her papers in on time". I think the problem is that many people honestly try, but we simply aren't all the same. Like, if I get four hours of sleep for a week- I'm delirious. I can't talk, let alone work. If I don't get any food- I am nearly suicidally depressed. I'm always worried to disclose my problems to anyone, because not being exactly the same makes you stupid or bad or ok 'disabled' and blah blah blah. Seriously, having a problem is severely stigmatized. I'm not going to admit to my teacher that I am on antidepressants that make me sleep 12 hours a day, or that I have difficulty doing group projects. I'm not going to talk about how sometimes I can't concentrate or sometimes I'm so upset I can't work. I've never broke up with my boyfriend(single for life!) but I can see how crying for hours on end for a week would cramp your school style.

Maybe teachers should be a bit flexible- for example, have an early date for papers and a late date, be able to bank 'shit happens' days for attendance based classes, and realize that giving papers that are like 20 pages long for an undergrad class is overdoing it. Maybe extra credit for a twenty pager, but come the fuck on. Last semester, I had to write I think 117 pages. Now I'm down to 50. But I think I require years of expensive ass therapy for that semester. I don't get why some people's incredible resilience should be bad for the rest of us- why not just good for them? Not all of us are superhumans, and it's stupid to measure everybody by the superhuman yardstick. What you can do, maybe I can't. That doesn't make me a bad person.