Jury Duty? Opinion! What do you think?

It IS a civic duty but can be excuseed if you are in a highly technical class and will miss critiacal material , you decide what is most important if it is a general studies class you may learn much more about 'real life' than in school I have duty next week and may or may not be selected. you certainly can be excused fromclass and your professor would be VERY unwise to make a 'case" about it

It depends on the case, but it could be more interesting than your dismissive professor indicated. And it is your civic duty, regardless of whether it's excusable. One incompetent juror taking your place could make a big difference!

First, you can postpone your jury duty to another time that's more beneficial to you. You're allowed to postpone it once per summons to a time that's within 90 days of your original summons date. If you don't want to miss any class just postpone for when you have a break from school. Regardless of what your teacher says, it is your civic duty. Being a student doesn't automatically excuse you from jury duty. You would have to have a good excuse as to why you can't serve. And you're going to have to participate at some point, unless you're one of those people who just don't show up. But it obviously doesn't sound like you want to skip out on it. Doing so is punishable by a fine and even jail time. If you seek to be excused by the judge, make sure you have a good excuse -- without lying. If you have some big exam the next day, for example, the judge would perhaps excuse you. Be prepared to discuss your class schedule and what type of class load you have as the judge may ask you specific questions to make sure you're not lying. As for whether your teacher could take points off because you're serving jury duty, well, if it's not illegal, it's definitely unethical if you ask me. What kind of lesson is your teacher telling you by outright saying jury duty is a waste of time? It's not a waste of time to the people involved in the court case. Someone has to serve on the juries. Without them, court cases couldn't proceed. Your teacher should know that it's illegal to avoid jury duty, and that it also can be fun and interesting. While a lot of people hate jury duty, some people really like it. Now, whether you're excused or not is solely up to the judge. To reiterate: just because you're a full-time university student doesn't mean you'll automatically be dismissed. It depends on how many potential jurors there are assigned to a case. If they're getting low on potential jurors, you might need a better, more pressing excuse than the others in the room. If it's only a 1 or 2 day trial, the judge might say that you can afford to miss a couple days of class. And whether or not you're excused isn't really up to you, since they can dismiss you all the same. They're going to ask you questions, and if you seem too eager to serve, they'll probably not want you. It's up to you now. You might be better off just postponing it to a week soon after your finals.

In most cases, missed work can be made up, but not missed lessons/lectures. Some states even allow online class to count (as an acceptable excuse from Jury Duty). Please think about it and research. A trial can go on for weeks. If this happened to you, would this or would this not mess up your semester beyond repair? You're a student only for a while. But after that, you'll have you whole working career/life to serve on Juries - maybe even annually (like me).

If you are excused from jury duty you will miss out on some civic education, it might be repeated - see if you can volunteer for jury duty at a later date. Your college instructor is not going to repeat the classes you miss !