Tardies and Absences

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A number of instructors in college, high, middle and elementary school will do this. They will say that if you have 3 tardies then you have one absence. This doesn't make any sense

Tardy = late or that one did show up but showed up at the time past when he was supposed to show up.

Absent = not there at all or did not show up at all

How does a tardy become an absence no matter how many tardies one has? Can someone explain the train of thought?

It has to do with how much time is missed. For example, if you're 10 minutes late three times, then that's a half an hour of class time that you missed, which is enough to qualify as an absence. At least at my middle and high schools, if you were 30 minutes late to a class, it counted as an absence, excused or not.

My college cares less about tardies and absences because most students are paying for their own classes so if they fail, it is their own money they're wasting. That's usually enough incentive to go to class because 3 or more absences can get you dropped from a class and you can't get a refund.

Not exactly related, but back when I was in high school, I was notorious for showing up late to class, faking sick to get out of school, and later on, just plain skipping class outright. Was anyone else here like this?

One time, I walked out halfway through a class. It was gym and we had a substitute who just sat there reading while allowing the rest of the students to do whatever they wanted as long as they stayed in the gym. As expected when you give high schoolers free rein in a gym, it was very loud and chaotic and the substitute did nothing about the noise. Since I am very sensitive to loud noises and a lot of stuff was going on, I got overwhelmed. So I just walked out and the substitute didn't even notice for about half an hour. I didn't get in much trouble though. I had to sit in the library for the rest of the class period but I preferred that anyways. And the principal called my mom who gave me a lecture.

Other than extenuating circumstances like above, I was too much of a rule follower to be excessively late to class or skip outright.

I've walked out of a few classes for similar reasons. As for following rules though, I've always hated them, partially because for much of my life I thought that I HAD to follow them to the letter lest I get punished. When I discovered as I got older that rules could be cleverly bent and even broken without any consequence in many cases, that's when I started skipping classes and such more often.

It doesn't work like that in my school but yeah that makes no sense to me as well.