To set the scene, it’s the last week of my senior year. We’ve been going on field trips all week, graduation practice starts soon and we’re doing no work whatsoever. I decided to check my grade portal, and that’s when I noticed I have a total of 68 lates… So, naturally, I tell all my friends and decide that I need to graduate with 69 lates. Which I do! Along with full credit for all my classes, I had a solid GPA and acceptances from all the colleges I applied to! Not to brag or anything, of course.
You may be asking, “Why and how the fuck did you do that?” If you were my one classmate I was talking to before health I would just say “mental illness” and vaguely explain a 504 plan, but since this is an article I can do so much more!
Why I did it is pretty easy to explain. It was funny and school started at 7:30 in the morning. You could not pay me, a chronic night owl, to wake up that early for more than a week straight (my parents tried).
The how needs a little more explanation. The first thing to explain would be a 504 plan. Very simply speaking, 504 plans are an agreement between a school administration and an individual student about how to accommodate that student’s disability. These plans can look very different for each person since it’s based on what will help that student and what the school itself can promise. There is much more to them, but for brevity’s sake, we’re going to run with that summary. My 504 was put in place the summer before my sophomore year for my anxiety disorder.
I got diagnosed a little bit after my freshman year started because I would have panic attacks almost every day before school, which meant I was either late almost every day, if I even ended up going at all. So, when the discussion started about what would be in my plan the lates and absences were a large aspect of it. What got put in my plan was up to me, my mom, my guidance counselor, and the Vice Principal of my school. I remember how to accommodate my lateness was a very big issue with the VP because they didn’t want to make a special exception or just let me break the rules. However, my guidance counselor and my mom were both very supportive of me there, which I’m very thankful for. They knew I was a good student and that those lates really didn’t mess with my grades, my anxiety was just a big issue in the morning. I think what ended up being in my first plan was a window of time, five minutes after the first bell, where my tardiness would be excused, weekly appointments with my guidance counselor, and a pass to go to guidance whenever I needed to.
That plan grew and adapted over time, especially with virtual learning when COVID started and my own development with my anxiety, but the excused tardiness stayed in place. That, paired with a lax attitude towards attendance my senior year, a very chill first period class, and good grades, made it very easy for me to rack up lates without getting into too much trouble.
While it was definitely a big need for me during my first three years of high school, I think senior year I was just feeling a little silly. Especially because I ended up making my graduation cap out of my late slips from the year.
