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Excuses, excuses

A dangerous time of year for grandmothers. And some funny ones in the comments.

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Comment by ks on September 23, 2010 at 6:06am: My students tend to lose their uncles and grandfathers more than the women in the family. I don't know why that is. Although I've had some creative excuses in the past.

My absolute favorite, though, was when I was a grad TA teaching an astronomy lab. I had one student miss 3 weeks in a row and then wanted me to let her make them up. When I asked why she missed, she said flat out that she was sick during one of the weeks, but that she missed the other two because she was drunk and didn't feel like coming to class. But would I please make time to set up the lab again just for her so that she could avoid failing the class.

Comment by TommysMommy on September 23, 2010 at 2:25pm: I had a good one in University: I was supposed to be writing a mid-term in Thermodynamics on a Tuesday but had had an asthma attack on Sunday night and they had given me Tylenol 3s to deal with the pleurisy I was also experiencing. Not a good time to learn that codeine makes me pass out. I fell asleep on one of the couches in our student lounge and a couple of the guys who were in class with me, and knew I'd been sick, tried to wake me up but couldn't do it. They said they considered calling 911 but because I was breathing and obviously in REM, they decided to let me be. (Also remembering these were Engineering students who knew when someone needed to sleep it off after drinking!) They went up to the exam a little early and told the Prof what had happened. He didn't believe them and came down to the lounge where I was lying there asleep. He took one look and told them to tell me to come see him after. Needless to say, I totally FREAKED when I woke up and realized what had happened. When I saw the Prof, he said as long as I could produce a doctor's note, he would roll the percentage that midterm was worth into the percentage for the final exam because he didn't do re-writes. I was never so glad to be writing a final worth 80% of my grade in my life!

Comment by hotmama on September 23, 2010 at 5:14pm: Love it! I posted it on FB.

Comment by rommie on September 26, 2010 at 4:39pm: I feel like I should track down my first semester professors and thank them for not making extra demands when I missed class to attend my grandmother's funeral.

I instructed a Math 90 (pre-algebra) course during my final semester. Pass/fail, with passing requirements simply to turn in all homework to be graded for completion, not miss more than 3 classes, and get an 80% or better on both the midterm and final. I was permitted to grand exemptions to the attendence policy. One student threw a fit and tried to file for discrimitation (on grounds of simply "not liking her") because I wouldn't excuse her 14 absences but excused another girl, who also missed a lot of classes. Both claimed to have medical conditions. The difference? Girl #2 was undergoing chemo, and Girl #1 was just frequently hung over.

Comment by mcglory13 on September 26, 2010 at 5:00pm: Last semester a student sent me an email after the class was over telling me I was a horrible person who clearly played favorites because I excused three students from a presentation. They were in the hospital. Because they'd been in a bad car accident. Which was in front of OUR BUILDING. So not only did they have notes, but I went out and CHECKED on them and saw them all mangled up. I have like, a thousand stories about student excuses, but they just make me tired these days.