Going back to school to get another degree in a more marketable field after work experience and grad school experience has opened my eyes to the problems in our education system.

However, without digressing too far into my personal opinions on said system, I want to move to the topic of swine flu on college campuses.

The flu season is upon us and it is all we hear about.

Swine flu, H1N1, flu, whatever version of this nasty beast you are most familiar with, we all know it to be a terrible flu that no one wants to get. So why are universities saying they are helping to prevent it without implementing policies that are consistent with their statements?

Let me clarify.

This semester I have the unfortunate reality of finding myself back in classes with a bunch of freshmen. There is anything innately wrong with freshmen, but there is something innately wrong with freshman-level classes. In them, you don’t learn to learn, you learn to come to class.

Freshman classes are traditionally designed to reward attendance over an individual’s true aptitude for a subject or even any true thought or learning.

I have one class this semester that has a grade distribution such that 60 percent of my grade is me just showing up.

This, along with the fact that no makeups are given “under any circumstances” and turning homework in through e-mail is not allowed because professors have extreme paranoia about computer viruses.

Through this type of attendance system, you start to see a structure designed to encourage sick students to attend class regardless of what the university spokesman says about their efforts to stop swine flu.

Last week I woke up and had the telltale signs of being sick: sore throat, stuffy nose, ached all over and no voice.

I was sick.

The signs I see plastered all over campus, as well as warnings on the news, tell me, “If you’re feeling sick, stay home.“ I sent my professor an e-mail letting her know I would not be in class that morning, that I was going to try to get into Thielen Student Health Center, and I e-mailed her my homework.

I got a response saying that she didn’t accept my homework because she won’t take an e-mail and that the syllabus clearly states that “if you are not going to be in class you are still expected to turn your homework in on time.”

I posed the question, “How am I supposed to get homework in on time when it is an 8 a.m. class and I wake up sick?”

If I am not coming to class, it is because I am sick. Do I have a classmate come by my house on their way to class and expose them to whatever illness I have? Does she expect me to drive to campus, turn in my homework and then go home? I really don’t understand.

If I felt well enough to go to campus, I would go to class. There is no way I am exposing someone else to whatever I have and knowingly inflict this illness on them. So what is the answer here?

At the end of the day, I missed 15 points in the class because I was sick. I missed a homework grade, even though it was done; a pop quiz that I was not allowed to make up; and my attendance points, because everyone is telling us stay home if you are sick.

What has this taught me?

Unless I am in the hospital having surgery, I will be going to class. Yes, I will be going to class come swine or any other kind of flu.

Some may be reading and think this is selfish, but I cannot afford — financially or otherwise — to miss 15 points because I am sick. I have a future to think about, a competitive job market and, if we are honest with ourselves, a cut-throat world to live in.

So I ask again, what are universities doing to protect against the spread of H1N1?

The are not changing policy, they are not supporting the student’s decision to stay home when sick and they are not advocating for students.

Why not do something to prevent a professor from taking 15 points away, not because the homework wasn’t done, but because you were sick and chose to not infect your fellow students?

I understand there will always be those students who abuse the system, especially when it comes to attendance. But it seems to me that if you focus on the material being taught as the primary source of grades, those who don’t come to class won’t fare well anyway.

If they do, then maybe they didn’t need the class to begin with and it’s nothing more than an arbitrary degree requirement.

Isn’t the ultimate goal here to produce productive members of society? Focus on actual intellectual ability and not one’s ability to show up to class, and don’t simply favor those with superior immune systems.

Perhaps a focus on actual learning will entice students to come to class for the right reason.

They can come to learn, not because they are afraid of losing points from the primary contributor of their grade, attendance.

Andrea Wersyn is a senior in elementary education.