Politics and failure

Yes, it's the middle of the night and yes, I should be sleeping but it's my favorite time of day to catch up on my blog reading. I'm busy following everyone else's political commentary. I must admit that I haven't quite made up my mind about who I'm supporting this time around. The Washington Caucus was over the weekend and many of the candidates were in town. I had several students miss section on Friday because they were going to hear candidates speak. For most of them I was quite happy that they were off having such a great experience and I look forward to what they have to tell me about it. There was one student however (who has yet to show up to any of his sections) who blithely wrote me an e-mail to say he had missed section to go to the Obama rally and had he missed anything important. Anything important?! "Um . . . dude, you're failing this class right now, why don't you try and change that?"