My professor told me to drop her class. Why? Because I missed a week due to the funeral of a friend, which was out of state. She said it was unexcused absence... WTF I'm 30 and in college, am I supposed to get note from my mommy, excusing me from school still!!!
Well, no, but if you just disappeared for a week without attempting to contact the teacher, that's... probably not going to reflect well on you, from their perspective. They can't acknowledge you had reason to miss their class unless they know about it, y'know?
From what I've seen, college profs tend towards pretty flexible about stuff like that, but generally if and
only if you're proactive about it. Coming in after missing a week of classes
without having told the teacher beforehand (or during the absence -- they've got contact information of some sort, presumably) what was going on and possibly (and
highly preferably) making arrangements before you left about interim work, etc., yeah, that can get you a failed class or a hefty chunk out of your grade, especially if the school itself has a blanket attendance policy.
Talk to her, y'know? Especially if you can get together notes or whathaveyou and demonstrate you're still intent on investing your effort into learning (catch up quickly, do well on the next demonstration of whatever), you can probably get back in the good graces, so to speak. Also make sure the teacher's not constrained by a campus wide attendance policy of some sort, which may make a difference -- if she is, you might have to take the issue up with someone above her, because the weight coming down on you isn't coming from the teacher, yeah. Funeral related stuff is almost always excused, but you might have to talk to some folks nicely if you didn't give some forewarning.