The student probably believes that:

Choices:
A. He has an appointment with the teacher
B. He has a grading break in store
C. He is a failure in physics
D. not enough information
He is a failure in physics
One student started packing up at the beginning of a lab exercise. I asked him where he was going. He said “I’m going to fail this class anyway, so I have other things to do.” It was true that he wasn’t doing well, and we had addressed this previously, but his attitude was completely defeatist. He had given up.
So, there, in the middle of class, before he could get away, I said “Well, yeah. You will certainly fail if you don’t even try. I thought you were graduating at the end of this semester.”
“I’m supposed to, but I won’t, because I’m going to fail physics. All I need is a D.” (He was right; his major didn’t require knowing any physics but they put it in the curriculum as a kind of gatekeeper course. Most students took physics much earlier in their studies than he did.)
“If you have already decided to fail, I can’t stop you; you’re an adult. But you can make an appointment with me anytime. You already know that. You can email me. It’s my job to help you understand, but you have to come to me. You are an adult. It would be very inappropriate of me to follow you around, inviting you to office hours. And you must do the homework and the labs.”
He stayed for the lab. I notified his counselor about what was going on, and she called him in and said the same things that I said.
Next class he moved from the seat at the edge of my peripheral vision, to the middle, started working his ass off, and he passed. For a while I thought he was closing in on a C, but he got his D and graduated.
And I didn’t give him anymore of a grading break than I give any of my students.