Poor little bunny, poor little sick student. I'm sure you're hoping I'll send my TA to tuck you into bed and deliver some chicken soup at an appropriate moment, but, I'm not. I'm mean.I'm delivering a warning shot up your snotty little nose instead. But, as I am currently suffering a fit of febrile insanity, I'll smack you down via story time:
Once upon a time, when I worked in the "real world," you know, like as an underemployed technician in an inner city emergency room, I knew a triage nurse who was the meanest, baddest-ass bitch you've ever met. We'll call him Nurse Cranky. Nurse Cranky hated his job. He had been discharged from the Navy SEALs for an injury and was determined to take his anger out on anyone and everyone. He did this with a box of tissues he wielded like the gun he wished it was. He also wore a button that read "Nurses get sick too! Cover your mouth when you cough." It was as big and as steely and as mean looking as a flak jacket. If you so much as chortled in his triage waiting area and didn't cover your mouth, he would fire a tissue at you like a missile.
To you, sick infectious student, I fire the following moral of the story and warning like a tissue missile from Nurse Cranky:
Professors get sick too!
So, idiot snot-nosed student desperately in need of a course in public health, go home and be sick there! I know you're not going to show up to class after the 3rd week anyways and you're not impressing me by showing up here sick in the first week. I promise, I won't remember you as the "dedicated student who showed up with a cold."
I will remember you as that sniffling embodiment of toxic germ warfare who coughed directly on me and thus got me sick in the first week of class. I will remember you as the one who totally destroyed what otherwise would have been a great weekend for research.
