Dear Sicky:

Over the last few months, with the out break of the Swine Flu, BYU has instituted a policy concerning sick students. If you are sick, contact your professor and DO NOT come to class. At the start of last semester, signs were everywhere. Literally. Every building was practically plastered in them. It was, however, for good reason. Why spread a sickness when the majority of the people living in Provo are students who have to go to class and the last thing they want is to get sick. I personally turned into a hand washing/hand sanitizer maniac. I was not going to get sick.

This policy of "if you're sick, please don't come to class" was and still is a good policy, despite the fact that The Swine is essentially dying down. It did, on the other hand, give people license to say that they had the flu and could not attend class for a week, when in reality these people were perfectly fine and decided to go to Disneyland instead of class. I'm not mad about that. THIS is what I'm mad about. I will preface with a story.

In my Advanced Molecular Biology class, I sit in the back of the room, in the same place every day. There is a boy who always sits behind me every class period. The other day, I sat down only to hear sniffling and snorting. That's right. He was sick. I looked over my shoulder only to see that he had bloodshot eyes and a red runny nose. Now, the fact that he was sick would have been bad enough. But no, he's not just sick, he's a mouth breather. As in "hey, sorry, but I can't breathe through my nose so I hope that it's okay that I breathe really loudly through my mouth instead and I hope you don't mind if I'm breathing RIGHT on your neck" mouth breathing. Needless to say, I felt so germy by the end of class that I wanted to bathe in hand sanitizer. But, oh. It gets worse. Just moments after leaning forward to get as far from sicky boy as possible, he started coughing. More like hacking. And the worst part was, he didn't really cover his mouth. As my roommate Emma said, "Doesn't he realize he broke like, 17 cardinal rules about being sick by NOT covering his mouth?" No Emma, I don't think he did realize. Now he was spreading his germs more by not covering his mouth and I was getting the full effect of it. I thought it couldn't get worse. But it did. He was sniffling and I knew he was going to sneeze any second. Oh boy did he. On me. At this point, I gagged. In fact I almost threw up in my mouth. I was ready to give him a piece of my mind when the bell rang and he was up and out the door. I turned to my friends in the class who just stared at me. One said "That...was foul." The other said, "Seriously? He has no manners."

So, to the Sicky Boy in MMBio 441: If I get sick within the next few days with a cold, I know that you are the one who gave it to me. I know where you sit every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning from 9:00 to 9:50. And I will come to drop off my bills for Tylenol and Nyquill to you. But I will not stay in class because I don't want to get other people sick. And I'll even wear a mask just for their benefit. But it will be because of you that I will be dying and I will show no mercy. You will pay me back and I will enjoy every penny. So you had better hope that my antibodies and white blood cells are awesome because if they aren't, it's on.

A word to all- please do not come to class (or if you don't have class, don't go out in public) if you are sick. And if you do decide to come, don't cough or sneeze or breathe on people. It's yucky. And it makes other people sick, which is generally not a good thing. Bring some tissues and sit as far away from everyone as you possibly can. That would be favorable.