Class Meetings (Attendance)

in Parts of Class

Class meets Monday and Wednesday, 11:00am-12:15 in Room 312 Wendt Commons.

  1. Class attendance is required. If you know that you will miss a lot of classes, or do not intend to come to class “nearly all of the time”, please do not take the class. This class requires you to show up. If you know that you cannot (for example, if you know you will be traveling extensively to interview), you should not take this class.
  2. If you are going to miss class, let us know. Letting us know afterwards is better than nothing. If you are sick, please do not come to class.
  3. Bring art supplies to class.
  4. If you miss an in-class experience, you’ve missed the experience. You cannot make it up.
  5. The slides are designed to be used as part of the lecture presentation - they may not make sense without watching the lecture.
  6. Please come on time.

Class attendance is required. It is my job to make sure that your time in class is well spent and worth it. It is your job to be there. Sometimes the value in a class experience may not be obvious to you. And sometimes, I’ll do something experimental which may fail. If you don’t feel like I am keeping up my side of this deal well enough for you to keep up yours, let me know.

However, if you are sick, you should not come to class (to avoid potentially infecting others). Please inform the course staff (see below). We will try to make accomodations for you.

You need to bring drawing supplies to class. For class, you need to bring “art supplies”: you need to have more than 4 colors of pens/pencils to draw with (4 colors is not enough). Personally, I like to have felt-tip markers, but other people prefer colored pencils. You will need to draw on paper (so you cannot just draw on your computer or iPad). We will not use them every day, but you may not know ahead of time when they will be needed. So bring them every day.

Measuring attendance in class is challenging. Some days, we will have in-class exercises where we will collect papers which will allow us to check. (do not cheat at this)

If someone’s attendance and participation is perceived to be a problem, we will penalize them. Generally, missing 2-3 classes is OK. More than that, we’ll need to discuss. (The “drop 2” policy applies.)

We understand that it is impossible for everyone to be at every class (even the instructor misses some classes). Things happen – bad and good. You get sick, you need to go to a family reunion in honor of your grandmother’s 100th birthday, you need to go to Stockholm to collect a Nobel prize, your alarm clock breaks and you sleep through class…

If you are going to miss class, let us know. If you can’t tell us before, please tell us afterwards. Please send a Piazza message to the TA and the instructor. Telling us why you are missing (or missed) class is optional. We will try to keep track of who comes to class, but, admittedly it’s an imperfect process given the size of the class. If we notice that you’re missing and you didn’t tell us, that’s not good.

The range of reasons people have for missing class is broad – and it’s difficult to judge what is “legitimate” or not. We won’t judge your reasons. If at the end of the semester, your attendance is a problem, we may penalize you.

If you know that you will miss a lot of classes, or do not intend to come to class “nearly all of the time”, please do not take the class. This class requires you to show up. If you know that you cannot (for example, if you know you will be traveling extensively to interview), you should not take this class.

You cannot “make up” in-class classwork. In general, there is no way to “make up” what happens in class. Generally, you cannot make up an in-class experience (since you didn’t experience it!). In some cases, we can make the class materials available to you after class, and we might give you partial credit for doing what you can.

In-class experiences will give us one tool to gauge who is at class. Do not try to game this. Cheating the system will be penalized. If you miss an experience, you miss the experience.

Please come on time! If you come late, you will disrupt your classmates. Please try to be on time.