I still think our big problem here is that a senator wants to hold onto his job while missing a month of work. Am I the only one who thinks it's kind of BS that a senator can resign as senator after he's won re-election and then get automatically rehired when the term turns over? A resignation symbolizes that you are no longer interested in serving. If Barack Obama had resigned on November 10th, 2012 after winning re-election, he would not have expected to ascend to the office again on January 20th, 2013. I mean, I know people get busy... but if someone is going to be missing entire months at a time, to me, they should maybe rethink being a senator.
Rather than resigning or taking a leave of absence, can't you just make an effort to take half an hour out of your studying to check up on things here? When I was a senator and had exams, I would always warn that I might miss some things, but usually I ended up checking in anyway just because it's impossible to study 24/7.
I'm not intending to take a LOA for "months at a time", it'd be two weeks, give or take a few days. I could serve out the remainder of my extra-super-special term as a compromise and then take the LOA, missing out the first two weeks of my term and then serving to the best of my ability for the other 87.5% of it. I suppose I could also make an effort to keep a (relatively) significant presence on the forum during that time, but I feel I wouldn't be up to snuff if I were to do that.
