Dark stood in front of his class, arms crossed, and when Peter came in he pointed out the few empty desks, "We do not have assigned seating, except for what people self-assign, so for the health of the group, those are the unclaimed seats."
Then he sighed, and without moving or uncrossing his arms he said, "Alright, class, we have a new student today, this is Peter Hollis," there were a few vague greetings of Peter, mostly by the really preppy kids or the kids who thought they were funny saying Hi, Peter like they were in a group therapy session, "Yes, okay. So, I am going to take a few moments to remind all of you of my classroom policies. When you come into class, you sign my attendance sheet. I take it at the bell, if you have not signed in by then, you are counted as tardy unless you have something explaining why you were late. I do not care if you have just crossed the threshold when the bell rings, if you have not signed in, you are late. That is how it might work in college," He looked at some of his more argumentative students, "I know you may be thinking you have heard college is more lax than high school, but I can tell you from experience college is 50% extremely relaxed professors who do not care if you come to class wearing shoes, and 50% professors who make me look like the former. I do not give extra credit, whenever I have done, the students who do not need it do it, and those who desperately need to help their grade do not. I do not round grades, you earn the grade you get. Most of you want to go to college, which means, in a way, you are in competition with each other, and when the college admission board is comparing your GPA to that of your nemesis, you will be grateful if you left my class with an A- and they with a B+. I do not accept late work except in the cases where I am mandated by the school to do so," This was actually a lie, but a tactful one. He did not want to give his students the incentive to say, 'I forgot,' and turn it in the next day, and in most cases he did genuinely not grant extensions. But, ultimately he wasn't heartless, so if a student had a genuine reason, even if it wasn't the school-accepted reason, he'd give them some leeway. Fairly often, students who he knew were struggling with their home lives or their mental health would receive an email after missing an assignment offering an extension.
"Finally," he concluded, "all of my tests are open-book and open-note. You may not talk to each other, and you may not ask me for the answers, but the way I see it is thus: I am training you to survive in the 'adult world' and that means training you to expeditiously find the answers you need. If you are in the hospital and your nurse forgot the dosage of your medication, would you rather her guess and maybe get it wrong--which, could kill you--or would you rather her go and look it up to get it right?" He waited for the few murmurs and near-chuckles to subside, then he said, "Peter, I am not giving you a chance to introduce yourself, we do not have the time. Now," He clicked a button on his remote that controlled the powerpoint slide, "Louis XIV, the Sun King."
