“Teach a class” was on my bucket list for years, so when the opportunity arrived, I joyfully agreed to serve as an adjunct marketing professor at a nearby university. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning I wore a big smile for the hour-long commute, excited to help young minds absorb knowledge.

While most of the class arrived eager (or at least willing) to learn, a few struggled. And not with the “learn” part; the need to “arrive” proved a challenge. In fact, one student missed 9 of the first 18 class sessions. So we met to talk.

“What happened all semester?” I asked.

He shared with me a few personal issues. To his credit, he prefaced it with, “I’m not asking for anything, I’m here to apologize for missing your class so much.”

I explained that the university has a clear and often-shared policy that automatically fails a student who misses one-third or more of a course’s class sessions. We both acknowledged that his ...