school carnival, muffins and menstruation

Today I was gifted with two more stamped menstruation forms, as excuses for missing university credit classes. That brings my total to six. One student has given me two now, so I've totally got her menstruation cycle down now, it's pretty fantastic in a horrifying way. There's only one month of classes left, I'm wondering if she's going to go for a trifecta. I'm guessing yes. And in even better news, apparently I can't use menstruation/cramps/what have you as a reason for a sick day, yeah I asked, I had to at this point out of sheer curiosity. But it's totally fine for (female) students excusing their absences from class. My contract doesn't actually cover that in detail, but I guess they expect me to not even consider doing that out of basic decency. This situation just seems to be abused as a free for all with my students. I understand if it's serious, but if all you have to do is go to the office and say you were menstruating and then you get a stamped excuse immediately...

And my gift of the day. Six muffins from a student. This student also just so happens to be failing my class. He had a stamped excuse form to miss classes (for a job, as many as he needed to miss, which apparently is totally fine) and couldn't make them before. Now that he knows he's failing, all the sudden he can attend the rest of the classes and brought a box of muffins to boot. Totally not a blatant bribe or anything. Serious upgrade from the chocolates another failing student dropped on me.

 And this week is my school's festival, carnival or whatever. Apparently it involves lots of drinking and hanging out in tented areas.

 And then subsequent dips in the school pond. I saw this guy as he was crawling out of the pond. At least he had the sense to take his shoes off. It's also raining so it's probably the best day of this 3ish day event to drop on into the pond.

This is the school's pond, it's roped off, but no one really cares if you head on in during the festival. It's actually a tradition.

I also learned about another tradition, it involves tying someone up on their birthday, throwing eggs at them and then dumping flour on them. It must be pretty fantastic having the kind of friends that will go to such great lengths for you on your birthday.