I read “Invisible” in the January issue and could not disagree more with the situation. Teachers have a lot of things to do, with grading, lesson planning, etc. They teach hundreds of kids a day and sometimes forget who was absent the previous day. To say that a teacher is not being empathetic or treating you as a person when you ask for the assignments you missed while out sick, is crazy. If you need empathy and reassurance that people noticed you were out, it seems to me like a sign of low self-esteem. If a teacher or student really didn’t respect or like a person enough to be empathetic, that would reflect over a long period of time, not just in one confrontation when they didn’t say, “Glad to see you back.”