Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Best student excuses for late work

Crooked Timber has a nice post on all-time greatest student excuses for late papers. I'd love to hear other examples of the best excuses ISW readers have received. But here are some personal favorites from the CT post:


"It was during my first year of teaching here in Arkansas that I got my favorite late paper excuse of all time: one of my freshmen comp students told me his paper would be late because, the night before, his stepfather had shot his computer with his shotgun while he was messing around, and it would take him awhile to get a new one."

"I missed an organic chemistry final. My excuse was being in jail and I had the newspaper account of the arrest as proof. The professor was pleased with the originality of my situation and let me take a make-up exam."

"How about “I got my girl friend pregnant and I had to help her get an abortion.” A friend of mine used this on two seperate occasions with the same instructor."

"During a summer session I had a student who failed to turn in an assignment via e-mail because his neighbors, from whom he was stealing a wi-fi signal, moved out, leaving him without internet access. That sounded pretty plausible to me."



5 comments:

  1. I once had a student miss class for the following reason (or 'reason'). The student's roommate was in the process of moving out and her king-sized bed in the garage of their beach house fell up against the driver's door of the student's car. The student was 'unable' to get in the car as the mattress was too heavy for her to lift (and apparently she has one of those cars with only 1 door).

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  2. Here's my favorite: "I couldn't make it to class cos I was out bow-hunting deer. I had just managed to kill myself a deer and I had to chop it up and put it in the freezer as soon as possible."

    Also, I got an 'I have the swine flu' email just yesterday - not sure of the authenticity of that one just yet!

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  3. I had a student ask me if I would delay the final exam because she had not yet brought the text.

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  4. I had a student miss several assignments and tests because his girlfriend was dealing with cancer. The only problem was that unknown to my student, his girlfriend was an acquaintance of my wife and she didn't have cancer.

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  5. Here's my favorite: "I couldn't make it to class cos I was out bow-hunting deer. I had just managed to kill myself a deer and I had to chop it up and put it in the freezer as soon as possible."

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