Being sick sucks. I mean, really. It’s awesome when you’re a little kid and missing school doesn’t matter because the only things you ever did in class were pick your nose, eat glue, and maybe learn about numbers. Maybe.
But when you’re older, being sick is a huge hassle. It started in high school, when teachers began telling you to make up work you had missed. What? What happened to the pat on the head and “Oh, that’s all right, you don’t have to do this assignment” of elementary school? Big bummer there. College is even worse. Some professors might not even let you make up an assignment, especially if you’re sick on a test day. You have to tell them you’ll miss the test in advance. That’s right, Professor. I’m planning on being sick Thursday. I was thinking the flu, but it might be AIDS. I haven’t decided.
Why the sick rant? Well, I’ve suffered a rather nasty cold/flu thing over the past weekend, which has caused me to miss most of class Friday (including a review session which could have really helped on the test I dragged myself out of bed for today) and two days of work. I thought I was getting better, but no. Mother Nature has to make it worse. Damn you, Nature. Now I’m not sorry for that one incident in the woods. That tree deserved it. You know what I’m talking about.
Anyways, the older I get, the less I like to miss school or work. It’s probably a result of having actual penalties for missing things. Whatever the case, I don’t like being sick. I just thought I’d let everyone know.
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It gets worse.
After you graduate, you’ll find yourself doing your work from your sick bed, or dragging your illin’ carcass to the office because you can’t afford to take use a sick day that you could otherwise “sell back” to the company at the end of the year, or you absolutly have to finish a project to be considered for a promotion.
The last place I worked, my boss had to send someone home even though he wanted to work through his illness, because he was “highly contagious”.
I figured as much. I’m lucky in my part-time job because it’s in food-service and if you’re even slightly sick, it’s better to stay at home than cough and/or sneeze over all the food. But if I keep going for my intended major…there’s no way you can claim you’re too sick to write a computer program. Maybe 10 years ago, when laptops weighed more than your car and had a battery life of roughly three minutes, but not in this day of 2 pound laptops with super-high-ultra speed wireless cards and 5 hour batteries. Ah well.
When I graduated way back in 99, we programmers were in such high demand that we wrote our own ticket. Show up whenever you felt like it. Employers couldn’t complain, because we were too difficult to replace in time to keep the millennium bug from blasting us back to the stone age. *grin* After y2k, so many systems and projects had been abandoned to deal with the bug, we were still in high cotton. Good times.
We no longer have them over that barrel. I’m glad I’m not in the industry anymore.