“Sorry I missed class, professor, but I had to stay with my girlfriend while she was getting her hair cut.” That is just one of many pathetic student excuses collected in a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Other excuses in the article include missing class to remake 50 gallons of Jell-O for a wrestling competition (the first batch spoiled) and mislaying a paper inside a tiger mascot costume. As wild as the excuses are, students are at least being creative to explain or cover up their unlikely circumstances.
The best excuse Rachel Halverson, WSU associate professor of German, ever heard was from a student who missed a week of class and returned with the explanation that he had mixed up night and day. An addiction to computer games was the culprit.
“He had started playing one night, played through the night, went to bed the next morning and slept though my class,” she said. “This pattern repeated itself for a week before he was finally able to break the cycle, sleep at night and attend my class during the day.”
Clay Mosher, associate professor of sociology at WSU Vancouver, also has heard excuses about students getting the days mixed up. One student’s e-mail to him said, “So, I will cut to the chase. My test is late. I thought the test was due Friday, today, but like the space-cadet I have been lately I had all my dates screwed up and missed the cutoff.”
Blaming the dog for missing homework is not new, but Michelle Freeman, coordinator of environmental health and safety, once had a student miss a midterm because he recently had his dog spayed. The dog ripped open stitches and had to be taken back to the clinic. The student even brought a note from his veterinarian, she said.
For some students, honesty is the best policy even when it comes to excuses. In the Chronicle, one student said, “I’m not interested in the subject of this seminar, and therefore unlikely to answer an essay or exam question on it. I didn’t really see the point in bothering to prepare for it.”
Karin Clifford, administrative assistant at the University of Idaho, has been collecting and categorizing excuses for a few years in hopes of publishing them in the future.
One excuse in Clifford’s collection is from a student who said, “I’ll be too sick to attend class Wednesday. My 21st birthday is Tuesday and my frat brothers are taking me out that night — so I’ll be very sick on Wednesday.”
For more unique student excuses — he was bitten by a shark, she had to donate her eggs to an aunt — see the article in The Chronicle of Higher Education at http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i20/20a00401.htm.
And a few more …
• My father is coming and I have to clean my room.
• I won’t be in class next week since I have made arrangements with the county to be in jail that week.
• I had my tattoo filled in yesterday and it hurts so much I cannot think.
• The copy I sent you was actually a rough draft and was not supposed to be sent. You have made me extremely nervous all semester and thus I sent you the wrong copy.
