Title has the simple version of this: How do you feel about professors who lock the doors to the lecture hall when they begin teaching and will not allow late students to come in?
Why I ask (the TL;DR version that's just personal stuff and unnecessary ): In my first semester of nursing school, this was a standard policy. I never liked it, but I definitely understood it. Punctuality is a big thing for me, but it isn't for a lot of people these days, and the cohort needed an overarching message that nursing wasn't the profession to get into if you couldn't get it together and arrive on time. None of the other professors we had after that have felt that a locked-door policy was necessary.
That was all good and well, but now I'm on my last semester of nursing school and I have a professor with a personal policy of locking the door when the lecture begins. I disagree with it on principle, because I think it's just childish. We all pay a lot of money for the education we receive. Every moment of it is important to us. We've made it to the final stretch, and I think we've shown the faculty that we're dedicated enough and wouldn't be late without a very good reason. Depriving us of lectures we paid for because that professor refuses to cope with someone quietly coming in and sitting down is kind of ridiculous IMO. But I've always figured, hey, whatever, I'm never late to anything so it won't affect me, and I've shrugged it off.
Well, guess what? It happened. Our class is several hours long, so we get released for 5-10 minute breaks every hour or so. We were released for a 10 minute break at 10 til, and I ended up needing a bit longer in the bathroom than I thought. I got back to the classroom 2 minutes before the 10 minutes was up, and I found myself locked out. I was irate. Ten minutes hadn't even passed yet, and I knew I had to have only missed her shutting the doors by less than a minute. It was unfair and I couldn't do jack squat about it. I couldn't even leave because everything, including my purse, was locked inside the classroom that I was locked out of. It was incredibly upsetting to have to sit outside for an hour knowing I was missing the lecture and being completely powerless to do anything about it.
Now I'm not stupid enough to complain to anybody and make waves about it; you pick your battles wisely, and this one would just be stupid. But I'm definitely still angry that it happened, and I'm going to write about it on that professor's evaluation at the end of the course. It's left me wondering how other students feel about/deal with these kinds of policies, or whether they even have them.
Our nursing instructors always locked the doors one minute past the start of class time but many of my teachers from non-nursing classes did the same thing. I grew up with parents that were on time for everything! If they were going to be late (very rare) they would not even go. So, I was raised in this type of home and it is a habit for me.
If you are late you are late, its your responsibility to get to class on time. Whatever is the professor's policy should be respected by the class. Letting students come in late doesn't teach a lesson. My professor allows late entry in at the break, she does not like the late students disrupting the rest of the class. Its always the same people that are late every time....
This happen to me in a prereq..chemistry to be exact. We were on break, I went downstairs to go to the vending machine and as I was coming back I noticed the door was closed but the door is always closed. I tried to open it and it was LOCKED. I knocked on the door for 20 mins, texted my classmates and they replied back and said,"she won't let us open the door for you." I literally had to go get campus police for them to let me in the class. Once I got in she claimed she didn't hear anyone knocking.
I can agree with locking the doors, as long as its at the correct time. I dont care if its two minutes before or 30 seconds before the lecture starts, that door should stay open til the second hand clicks on the correct time. Then it should locked and oh well for the ones who missed. But two minutes before hand, especially when there is still a student missing, should not happen, and is not fair.
Im feeling two emotions right now : I'm absolutely enraged at how the OP was treated (assuming her side of the story is 100% how it happened) and I'm honestly flabbergasted at the gall of all the self righteous folks swaggering into this thread to point fingers at the OP and say "well I was NEVER late and if I could do it everyone else should be able to do it TOO!"
Again if the OP is being completely honest, some of you are already failing on basic reading comprehension alone since she CLEARLY stated that she went back 2 mins EARLY and the door was locked.
Second of all, you folks who apparently can't see past the length of your own noses to understand that everyone else's life is not just like yours need to get off the high horse and take a sweet sip of reality.
This may be hard but follow me on this m'kay? I'm about to blow your mind. Patients don't come from some magical place called Patientville. They are just like you and me. In fact many nurses (and nursing students!) are also patients! Now think about your last pt who had a colostomy, or was diabetic, took diuretics or other medications on a strict schedule that didn't always match the class breaks. Think about them trying to live a nice normal life by (oh i dont know) going to nursing school or some other higher edu program. Now imagine how hard it would be for these patients to deal with this idiotic locked - door policy as students and if you still don't have any compassion for them than I can at least tell you that you'd be perfect for a position in Administration since they're the only people I know who can make up idiotic policies without first consulting with anyone/anything connected to Reality.
There are several ways to deal with the goofballs that come in late, locking everyone in a cage... is not one of them. Thankfully my school raised free-range nursing students.
I WISH my instructors would lock doors. I'm in a class of 60, maybe 20 show up for 9( when class starts), the rest wander in up to 45 minutes late, put their tape recorders at the front, then sit down, get up 5 minutes later, and go downstairs to the Dunkin and get breakfast, come back up 15 minutes later (while the professor is lecturing), charge their phones in the front of the room, get up to grab their phones (again while she's talking), get up, leave, come back 30 minutes later, but bc it's recorded, they don't miss anything. I can't begin to tell you how happy I will be at pinning in May, knowing I will never see these people again and how disrespectful they are. The one time I called them out on it? I was told "you ain't the teacher, so shut up about it" then was called a racist (again, you can't make this up). Counting down the days...
There are always a crowd who try to rule others. The instructor should have their foot down. :-) Some people feel they don't follow rules and do what they damn please and when they want to do it. Some believe the world revolves around them only.
The students who constantly come in late drive me banannas. It is so distracting to listen in on a professor who is trying to fit in all the material in hardly enough time let alone doors opening and chairs moving around. Kudos on the professor.
I don't like feeling like a child. I understand the need to drill the importance of punctuality in students, but maybe that should happen more in clinicals instead of the lecture hall. So, I can't say I am a fan of this policy. Life is distracting and I need to learn how to focus on my stuff...I can't go around like "I couldn't do it so and so was making noise. I couldn't because xyz." I understand that late comers are distracting but I can try to build my stamina and focus in the midst of distraction. And i they continue to be pesky (popping gum, talking to students) Imma say something.
I would not lock my door as a professor but if there are repeat offenders, I would address them in private, and if they keep doing it, then I'd embarrass them in the whole darn lecture, especially if I was not ever given a reason for it (I take care of my sick mother and I commute for 2 hours, etc). If that did not work, then I'd have to move to some kind of unfortunate grading or disciplinary policy. I dunno, I went to a really hard-knock-get-your-stuff-together-ot-else-you'll-fail school for my BA and my professors just embarassed the crap out of pesky students, lol. If the student is late, he/she is missing out and that's too bad, I'm not gonna get my ego hurt about it and I will do business as usual. I live in a crazy city working a slightly crazy inner city job where some new ish happens every other second-- you have to learn to ignore and multitask--or else fail at doing the job.
I think it's asinine. I got locked out when I was on time once in NS (class started at 8 am, I could see the clock in the room and it was 8 on the nose, door was locked.) I was 31 years old, had paid good money for that class, and was "late" because of extra-bad traffic that AM (the teacher knew I was habitually early.) I had been a working professional for 12-ish years at that point and was not in need of a lesson on punctuality. Stuff happens.
Incidentally, in two years at my hospital, I've clocked in late exactly once. It was less than 10 minutes late, and also due to a traffic accident that doubled my commute. I'm sorry, but I'm not getting up 45 minutes earlier when I already get, on average, 6 hours of sleep between night shifts, on the off chance that there might be a pileup.
I do set my alarm for earlier when there is a snow/ice chance; I've never been late on one of those days.
I WISH my instructors would lock doors. I'm in a class of 60, maybe 20 show up for 9( when class starts), the rest wander in up to 45 minutes late, put their tape recorders at the front, then sit down, get up 5 minutes later, and go downstairs to the Dunkin and get breakfast, come back up 15 minutes later (while the professor is lecturing), charge their phones in the front of the room, get up to grab their phones (again while she's talking), get up, leave, come back 30 minutes later, but bc it's recorded, they don't miss anything. I can't begin to tell you how happy I will be at pinning in May, knowing I will never see these people again and how disrespectful they are. The one time I called them out on it? I was told "you ain't the teacher, so shut up about it" then was called a racist (again, you can't make this up). Counting down the days...
This reminded me of an old professor I had. He told the class that anyone who wished to record the lecture had to put their name on the recorder. If you left the room for more than 3 minutes he would turn your tape recorder off, as the bathroom was only across the hall. We had a couple frequent flyers who would do something similar as your classmates who were NOT happy but quickly learned.
): In my first semester of nursing school, this was a standard policy. I never liked it, but I definitely understood it. Punctuality is a big thing for me, but it isn't for a lot of people these days, and the cohort needed an overarching message that nursing wasn't the profession to get into if you couldn't get it together and arrive on time. None of the other professors we had after that have felt that a locked-door policy was necessary. 
EwaAnn
282 Posts
I was raised in that environment