I commuted to Washington DC.  One day I saw a cement truck on its side at one of the exits off of I95.  I was thinking at the time that there was an instant, for the cement truck driver, where the driver knew that the truck was about to tip over.   There was nothing he could do.  The driver had taken the exit too fast, and there was not recovery from what was about to happen next.

This week is the middle of the semester.  There are three students in one of my classes that stopped attending the class.  Even though I had sent previous messages to them warning of impending doom, I sent one final email to them.  I told them that it was now mathematically impossible to pass the class.  I recommended that they withdraw from the course so that the grade would not impact their GPA.  I also recommend that they take the class again when they had more time to devote to the course.

Like the cement truck driver, there is a point in the semester when a certain student will not pass the course, and there is nothing that student can do.  Was there an instant when they had the realization that they were tipping over?  Did they take the exit too fast?  I knew the point of recovery had passed, but prior to my final email, did they?