The Marginal Benefits of Taking a Sick Day

Tomorrow, Thursday, December 5th, 2013, I will not be at school. I have a scheduled visit to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Typically, when a student knows in advance that he/she is missing school to go on a college visit, he/she gets a pre-excusal so they're not counted as absent. Each student is given two college visit days per year as upperclassmen, which won't be counted as a missed day of school as long as they fill out and turn in the appropriate paperwork. I, however, have made the economic decision not to get a pre-excusal and to instead just call in sick and be counted absent tomorrow. My reason for this is that second semester, seniors can't miss more than five days of school, otherwise they have to take finals. The way I look at it, I'll already be missing one day for senior ditch day, and there's a chance I could either be sick or have a family emergency or something else that could cause me to miss school. I also have dance competitions second semester, and if I have to compete on a Friday, I'll likely have to miss school. (Or if I'm really tired on a Monday after a competition and I didn't have time for my homework over the weekend, I most likely won't want to attend school that day.) There's no way I'm taking finals next semester; I will do everything possible to make sure I don't have to. But I want to have as many possible days off as I can, just in case I need them. So, I have decided to save these college visit days for second semester, although I might use them for other reasons besides actually visiting colleges. For this reason, the marginal benefits of saving my pre-excused college visit days for next semester outweigh the marginal costs of being counted absent tomorrow.