"You come most carefully upon your hour..."

 You can be many things in a professional orchestra, but you can't ever be late.

That's true in the sense that you have to play in tempo as well, but even more than keeping time you must show up on time for rehearsals and concerts. And five minutes beforehand is not on time.

It actually is contractually late in most places to be there only five minutes ahead of time. You're required by your work rules to be in your seat, prepared to play, and in proper dress code five minutes before the service is scheduled to start. 

This ethic isn't enforced through the work rules, though. It's an unspoken culture that gets ingrained in you from the very beginning. You MUST be on time. For most people that means being in the building a half-hour before the "shift" starts. 

It's a good way to do business. Even when the unthinkable happens (traffic jam on the thruway, all the parking spots full in the garage) and you are rushing in twenty minutes later than usual you are still technically "on time."

But it's a very different world than the one that my students live in.

"I forgot." 

"The coffee line was really long."

"I couldn't find my music."

"I was talking to another professor."

But they finally got one up on me yesterday, or at least one of them did. I was ten entire minutes late to my first student's lesson. (Childcare handoff delayed due to traffic.) 

I've lost the moral high ground with that one.