In high school, I met many people who didn't care one bit about failing a class. Some even bragged about it and laughed about it. Public high school is free, and retaking failed classes is free. Sometimes teachers even got in trouble for failing kids and were forced to pass them through anyway. I figured a private, expensive college would be different.

It's not.

There is a bit of a difference between people laughing about not studying at all the day before a test and people laughing because they have a failing grade. Some people can get by without studying, and as long as they don't complain about getting a bad grade without studying then that's up to them. What I don't understand is why people seem to brag about failing a class. For some people it could be a coping mechanism to laugh about it instead of being upset, but failing a college course is not something that should be laughable.

College is hard for a lot of people, and getting a tutor for a class doesn't make anybody stupid. College, especially at Concordia, is also very expensive, and paying to retake failed classes adds up quickly. I especially don't understand when people find it funny to fail because they didn't turn in assignments. I get that there's a lot of work to do, I have homework every night; but chances are it takes more than one assignment being missed to fail a class. This happened more in high school than now, but even here at Concordia, I hear people talking about not doing the homework, and witness it during class when we go over the homework together. Not having it done one day because it was forgotten or lost in the sea of other subjects is understandable, but never having an answer in class just embarrasses the person who doesn't do the work as well as wastes everybody else's time.

There are also services that will help teach students time management skills, so that it's easier to not forget a piece of work or not have time to do it. Nobody will ever know who goes into time management sessions or tutoring sessions except for the other people who need the same services.

The services on Concordia's campus are free for students to use, and other colleges normally have similar resources that are either free or at least fairly inexpensive. Even an RA is usually willing to help, and teachers have office hours to discuss the trouble students have in classes. Neglecting to use these services wastes time and money, which nobody ever has enough of.

Plus, it always feels better to pass than to fail.