How long?

Yesterday I had an online class with a student. The class was supposed to be at 4 o'clock in the evening. I had joined the virtual classroom at 3:55 p.m. it was 4 o'clock but the student had not joined the class yet. I thought that maybe it was because of the network issue at his end. I decided to wait for 2 minutes.

It was 4:05 p.m. The student had not joined yet. I decided to check with his mother whether he was a going to join the class. I called up his mother and she informed me that he would be joining in a couple of minutes. I was angry because I had already wasted 5 minutes of the time. But I decided to stay calm and wait for him to join.

Finally the student join at 4:10, 10 minutes later then the scheduled time. I had already started losing my patience yet I decided to stay calm. I asked about his school and exams so that the conversation would cool me off. He did inform me about everything that he had done in the school for last couple of days and that day. He appeared excited and wanted to talk a lot that was not a part of the curriculum.

After spending 5 minutes with small talk, I decided to drive his attention to the lesson. We started strong with our lesson. While I was teaching him a concept he interrupted me. He asked me how long would the class take despite annoying that the class is for 1 hour. I told him that 15 minutes of the class are done and we still have 45 minutes to go for our class. He looked at the clock and told me that he had a basketball class which was at 5 o'clock. He told me to complete the lesson by 5 o'clock so that he can move to his basketball class.

I was not impressed with his audacity. I told him in an authoritative voice that the class is for 1 hour and I would take the entire 1 hour of the class. I also told him that he should have joined earlier if he wanted to leave early. This is when I saw a disappointment on his face. It was not my responsibility to worry about his mood. I told him that being his teacher it is my duty to take the entire time for lesson so that he could understand it well.

Then the class went on uninterrupted till 4:55 p.m., again this time he stopped me to ask how much time is still left. I told him that we still have 13 minutes of our class time pending and I would be taking that entire time. He reminded to me about the basketball class. I reiterated that he should have joined the class earlier so that it could end exactly at 5 o'clock. I was aware that his mother was nearby and she must have heard everything I had said.

It was 5:05 when he again asked me that he was getting late for the basketball. His repeated reminders about the basketball class were making me angry but I was trying to stay calm. Finally at 5:08 pm I let him go and I told him again that next class onwards he should join on time so that he would not be late for his next class.

I am really tired of this entitled behaviour of people who expect that we should compromise our work ethic for their interest.