Everybody has a good excuse when you miss an exam or turn in the midterm essay late. Augustana College professors share some of the worst excuses they have heard. Visit: www.AugustanaObserver.com
And then it was actually stuff that probably actually happened and left those kids traumatized. Haha, someone went to jail and has a record that might fuck up their entire life now. So funny, haha, lolol, what a great excuse. He probably killed himself shortly after, haha, so funny.
The murder one tho?… his son murdered his wife’s lover. That’s him. Yes f you interpret the wife’s lover to be the storyteller that’s him which makes no sense. And it you interpret the wife’s lover to be the son’s wife, that’s the son killing himself which makes no sense.
These are mostly not excuses, but actually good reasons for extensions! I once had a student who had defended his mom against a person wielding a knife. They both survived, and he came to class with his hands and fingers in casts and splints. I told him I would make sure he passed the class and could get as much time on as many assignments as he needed, etc. He didn't come for the rest of the semester -- I mean, he was so messed up even getting dressed and feeding himself was difficult, much less carrying books to school! -- but he did submit his essays and passed.
That's just stupid U made sure to make him pass there are hundreds of poor guys in Africa who are desperate to study but he defended his mom and u make sure to make him pass.
@@somyaranjansahoosahoo5127 He wrote all his essays, it just took him a lot longer because his fingers were literally shredded. If you have figured out how to write essays with your toes, then good for you.
no it's not how you going to tell your teacher face-to-face that he won't be back in another few weeks cuz he has to be let out of jail. you're already out of jail to have this conversation. To make this more believable he should have done this over the phone or have someone fake a parole officer.
My biology professor said that one student used the “my grandma/grandpa died and I had to attend their funeral” excuse to get out of doing assignments on time. The only problem is that they used that excuse five times.
@@europaepsilon7970 when they marry someone else. Their new partner is also your grandparent. Or when you have a stepfather or a stepmother; their parents are also your grandparents if you accept them and they accept you
@@aderiancreature8464 I was guessing that you were going to say that, I guess, but I was thinking about biological grandparents. Like the reason the grandchildren and grandparent are related is through the child's parent. If one of the grandparents remarried then they aren't the biological parent of the child's parent.
@@europaepsilon7970 that my be, but if your mothers sister marries a man that's your uncle. You just accept it, hee feels like a part of the family when they married befor you were born. It may feels strange, if she marries him when you're 20 already, but it is the same, he is still a part of the family now. And it is the same with grandparents. It's only about how you feel about them.
MegaBall The fishy part is that a wife's lover would be the husband, aka the son doing the murder. Unless of course there was an affair in which murdering the wife's lover or the person she was cheating with doesn't seem too far out there.
Jacob Greenstone Young child, a lover is someone that you are having an affair with, unless you explicitly clarify a different meaning. The wife was cheating and somehow the husband found out about it.
My best friend in medical school had her baby 4 days before our respiratory midterm and still took the exam. She told me she was studying while in active labor. She’s the strongest person I know and I have mad respect for her. She also has a 2 year old at home.
That’s nice but this leads to the problem of bad professors being like well if one person can do this blah blah blah then they ignore every other reasonable excuse
I'm in med school and literally skipped a morning simlab session I had today and asked for the afternoon because I slept in. Mad respect to your friend, but I simply would not. I'm too firm on my boundaries and balance. Very lucky the medical school I got into holds the same value of humans first, doctors second.
I had a professor that demanded a good excuse from me so I was honest with him. I told him I have severe anxiety and haven't developed good management strategies for it... he gave me an extension. Nice guy.
I actually felt ashamed hearing that story. If a student that just gave birth to a child can attend the final, then I have no reason I shouldn’t be able to turn in my HW/take a test ever again.
@@edwin_the_penguin You should know everyone has a different physical and mental strength. Some give birth and can do their test 2 days later. Others will take more time to regain their strength. You shouldn't compare yourself in this case :)
If the student: Roars Forgot to set her alarm clock and missed half of the semester during the winter And is chubby That ain't your student, that's a bear.
Not too far off my university experience. I think I ended up having been to about 50% of my lectures. We were graded only based on a final exam for all our classes, so I just read the books and did the exercises and did fine.
I called in, (to work, not school) told my super I had been abducted from my bedroom by aliens and was up all night making crop circles and forcibly mating with their women. I told him I was very tired and needed some quality, me time. You may think I would be fired but for more than four years, I was never late, never sick, always pulled extra hours when needed. He said "I hope we see you on Monday, get some rest." Never miss the opportunity to make an impression. He's probably still telling that story.
Can you divulge more? I can’t tell if this is a joke or a mental health crisis or if I’m just gaslighting you and you really believed you’d been abducted and mated with alien chicks (lucky). Good work ethic btw
I literally slept through my last day of finals in 9th grade. Slept through all of my alarms, and woke up at 10:30 (it was a half-day, so that was an hour before school ended). I panicked, and got to school as fast as I could. Thankfully, I’d established myself as an honest student, and I was able to take all of the finals. Didn’t do well on them, but that’s a different issue. Also once just straight-up missed that a midterm exam existed in a class in college because it was online and I didn’t notice for a week. When I finally did notice it (at 11pm a week later or something) I emailed my professor saying “uhhh this was totally my fault, but it wasn’t intentional.” He asked if I could have the test done by the next night, if that would be enough time to study. I responded that actually, I’d just done it in a panic as soon as I saw it existed. Somehow, I got a 17/20!
I just want to thank everyone for helping me get to 1000 likes. This is my first comment that had done so. This is truly an honor and more amazing than anything else I've done. Thank you
One of my high school teachers told me the story of how one of their friends was teaching a class and a student basically missed class until the end, where they came in and told the teacher "Sorry I missed class. Somebody just died in my arms." or something like that. As they left the room, the teacher noticed that the student's hands were covered in blood. Later that day, they heard the news that somebody had been shot in the area between where the student lived and the school. It turned out that the student was late to class because they were holding a dying man in their arms during their final moments. Makes me happy that I have never had to deal with that type of stuff. I can't imagine what that student must have been going through at the time.
jojibot My cat eats bugs all of the time. Cats will also kill small animals for other reasons too. It's still not a good excuse because the cat should not have gotten to the caterpillar in the first place.
I did once have my computer broken before submitting a presentation which I'd spent hours on. My housemate came in the night before, drunk, and spilt his beer over it. No one believed me. I got 60%.
This happened to me last week. The power supply started smoking out of nowhere. Good thing I managed to get it replaced within 2 days or I would've failed my assignment. I don't know why "my computer broke" is not a legit excuse.
The first day of class my Organic Chemistry (a notoriously difficult class) Professor explained how important the Exams were and the very specific make up scenarios (athletes, doctors note, etc). This one student used his one phone call from jail to call the professor to see if he could make it up. He got a 0.
I gotta share mine with ya... back when I was in the work force, I would set my alarm clock like, an hour early, so I could snooze longer, so there was this one time, when my alarm clock went off, and I smacked it somewhat fierce, as was common practice... closed my eyes, and began to mentally prepare for the day ahead. I imagined myself getting out of bed, turning on the coffee pot, taking a shower, getting dressed, drinking my coffee, and walking out the door to catch the bus, and walking into the office, and that's when I woke up late for work, so I called my boss, and told her I was gonna be late, cause I dreamed I was already there.
Andrew Odinson Same! Was it a roleplay where they needed to be to their aunts and he had a headache.and the mother accidentally gave him Viagra so they had sex.so it would go away?
I used to live on a first floor and one day as I was about to sit down to prepare for a French test I smelled smoke and then I actually saw it coming up from under the floor. I called the emergency number, grabbed my cats, my family left the flat and we waited outside while the firemen were dealing with the fire. It turned out that some disgruntled ex-employee from a shop beneath our floor had gone to their former place of work, cleaned out the till, used toothpaste to leave a lovely "Happy New Year, motherfuckers" message on a computer screen and set the whole place on fire. Luckily for everyone in the building we lived 1 minute away from a fire station, so the shop was the only place to get damaged by the fire. But still we had to open all the windows to air out the smoke (everything at our place smelled of smoke for weeks), and then it took some time for the flat to get warm again since it was at the end of December. By the time the whole mess was sorted out I was just beat and went to bed. Fast forward to the next day as I'm standing in front of my French teacher saying "... and that's why I couldn't possibly prepare for the test". She looked me up and down, smirked and said "Of all the made up stories I've heard this has got to be the worst one. Studying isn't that hard". I dropped that bitch's class the next month.
The worst part is that they probably didn't finish the dream cuz it's ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO FINISH DREAMS after you wake up. It's just so hard to go back to your dream I think I could do it like only 2 times.
@@Ordep_Aviaras I can go back to the same dream semi-reliably. I just have to not get out of bed and try to fall back to sleep as soon as I realize I woke up. If I fully wake up, usually by making any major movements to my body or thinking too hard about anything other than the dream, then it's screwed.
Is it normal to be watching yourself in 3rd person doing things and then realizing you're in a dream, waking up but not opening eyes, then being back in. Except theres a bunch of changes to the dream and you can somewhat control what happens
I told flat out told one of my teachers. It's not excuse but I'm mentally fried and decided to play video games instead and I knew I was getting a zero. The funny part was she gave me a few extra days to get it done because I didn't lie.
@@SieMiezekatze My prof once messed up and had me and another student prepare the same paper to present. I found out the day of, as she got up and presented the same topic as I was going to that day. Prof said „whoops“ and I had to prepare and do a whole new presentation. He had crossed out my name on his list and written the other woman‘s name instead, he „thought it was a typo“, as her name was Lara and I‘m Sara. ugh.
My father died suddenly and my English composition instructor reluctantly offered me an Incomplete to re-take the class in the future. I declined and tried to mud through. Because I was still messed up, I was literally one day late turning in an assignment and he declined to accept it and failed me. Professors: have more grace.
I had an LA teacher in 8th grade and everyone hated him bc he was a HUGE ass. He expected us to write a whole ass 8 paragraph paper with minimum 8 sentences per paragraph; complete with bibliography, works cited, and in text citations in 45 minutes. He’d give us a 10 page packet every week for a major grade that we had to complete by Friday. It was divided into 3 sections (only saw him 3x a week). I hadn’t done like half of it when I came into his class and he got really pissed at me for not doing it so what I did to avoid getting an F was that I made my best pouty face, made my eyes real red and watery, and started crying my eyes out in class. He was really surprised by it and didn’t know what to do so he started trying to calm me down and ask me why I was crying. I literally just said “It’s so stressful” before making it look worse so he ended up just sending me to the nurses office with a pass he had signed. The reason he put there literally said “mental health day”. After that if I didn’t have a HW assignment completed he’d let it slide and dock only 10 points off the original score
Remember you can get sent to jail before you’re ever convicted. You could have done nothing, been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and boom, you’re in jail.
@@zekeross6542 I agree. It sounds like the professors interpret the worst excuse as being the worst thing the students have to face and can't complete their assignments.
1970s. I was doing grad work in evolutionary biology at UC Davis. I asked my oceanography professor if I could take the midterm a week early, as Mike Seeger had asked me to play on an album he was recording. Mike said he couldn't recreate the Berkeley sound without my dulcimer. "That's the worst excuse for missing an exam I ever heard," said the prof. I dropped out of grad school and became a professional musician. The album we recorded, "Berkeley Farms," is still available on Smithsonian/Folkways. I don't know what became of the professor.
@@armorpro573 I woulda thought so too. Maybe he hadn't made up the exam yet? And having become an anthro professor later in life, I understand how frustrating all those excuses can be. An excuse plus a smiley face is not equivalent to a paper turned in on time, I used to say. But on the third hand, I think I was insensitive to the difficulties of students' lives.
Honestly I just straight up told my professors "I didn't really have the energy to get it done." That said, I rarely ever miss class or assignments. 3.8 cumulative GPA throughout college. I think that helped me make up the few missing assignments I had. I've only had one or two assignments that got docked for late submission.
One time a professor-after classes had been canceled for one week only after Hurricane Harvey-had the audacity to say “my house is repaired now which means all of your houses should be too, so there is no excuse not to do your best work”....while we still didn’t have walls or a bed to sleep on and the current damage was evident on every neighborhood you drove down 🙃😅
@@zekeross6542 if they hadn’t all made a literal parade down the hall to get this man fired, they should have done that, and then yes, attach photos of their destroyed homes in their papers lmao
@@dominoot2652 the fun bit is the professor was a woman who was also a high school teacher (this was a dual credit class but we had real professors come from the college because it was two miles down the road). She still works there to this day. But yes, I should have attached photos of my house’s condition within the essay 😭😅
The cat one is a pretty damn reasonable excuse. My cat will eat any bug she sees move. Spiders, worms, moths, etc. I would not be surprised if she has eaten a few caterpillars.
Laughs aside, this shows that Professors are fully aware of stress students go through, having legitimate reasons, something like burnout should be considered as well, and yet they brush it of as weird, when it is crystal clear that most students are battling to get through their days and yet they do nothing to challenge or change the system
Ah, this brings back memories. I had a fire in my dorm room, woke up to my bedding ablaze. I was extremely fortunate and made it out with only burnt hands and hair, and smoke inhalation. But I lost everything in there. It was finals term and my practical write up was due in the day after. The professor wouldn’t accept my ‘excuse’ although I had bandaged hands and an interesting hairdo. Maybe he thought it was the new fashion. I think I was still partially still dealing with the shock as I just stood there because I genuinely didn’t have anything and didn’t have anyway to reproduce it,. I couldn’t even access my room as it was sealed off. Luckily a wonderful lab tech told him he was being an arse, and I was obviously not making it up. I am still appreciative of her!
@@k-leb4671 Age old story. Candles. It was student halls and someone had blown the electrics so we had no power or light. I fell asleep before blowing them out. My duvet caught and you know they rest. The warnings they give with candles are justified, be careful folks!
I told my prof the other day that I forgot we had a test and had no excuse for missing it, and asked if I could make it up. He let me do it because he appreciated my honesty and said "the excuses wear me down". I had missed 2 other tests in that same class, I figured I may as well try my luck a 3rd time haha. If I miss another I won't bother because I've had way too many chances at this point lmao
This video triggered a flashback. I have a professor who gave a major assignment online around 10 pm with the instruction: print the pages and write the answers in blue pen. Then submit the paper the following morning at 8 am sharp at his office. Not by e mail. I never went to sleep and finished my assignment until morning. . I have no class schedule the following day but I needed to physically submit that assignment. There was a vehicular accident on my way, blocking the traffic. In a nut shell, I reached his office 8:02 am and all he said was, "You are late and I wont accept an explaination." Up to this day, I wonder why he is making students suffer?
Same with my math professor he didn't even let the late people come in later for extra time for a test that's 30% of grade. Even though there was a bombing in a train station that made it harder to show up. We were all pissed ;-;
Yeah, I had some professors like that too... I honestly think some sadistic people become professors just so they can feel good making other people's lives worse.
I once had to email 3 professors the weekend before finals because I started having seizures and was in the hospital for diagnosis. None of them even required I send in hospital paperwork, they just trusted me because I was a good student. One prof even dropped the Final for me so I didn't have to take it. I was super lucky.
@@MaxThrills the problem is, is that if everyone is a good student, profs still only have capacity for so much and would likely still gravitate to the best students.
@@dremorakynval1269 if the class is collectively mastering the material, chances are that the material will be adjusted accordingly to sufficiently challenge students
wouldn’t call most of these worst, just the wildest. here’s one i had to give that i’d call pretty wild: i couldn’t hand in my homework once due to a sudden hospitalisation, it was like, a colouring sheet in high school? the teacher asked me why i didn’t pack it and do it while at the hospital... i wasn’t conscious. and i had a medical certificate. i don’t hold many grudges, but man... i thought i was gonna die that day, so a colouring sheet wasn’t really a priority :^)
@Waldel Martell Could be! But she could have been going back to school while married to someone. She could very well have been in a financially stable spot
I had a high school teacher who said everyone got a free pass to be late to class once a semester AS LONG AS they came up with a funny excuse (preferably untrue, like being abducted by aliens)
my public speaking professor told us about a student she had who was pregnant and she showed up to class WHILE SHE WAS IN LABOR because she had a speech in class that day. she was like "hey um can i go first i dont feel well and need to leave" turns out her contractions were like 5 minutes apart at that point and she had somehow driven herself to school in this condition??? anyways the professor didnt let her do the speech and made her call someone to take her to the hospital lol pregnant women / new moms are simply built different
This reminded me of the one student who couldn't attend online class. For the reasoning, he wrote 'goat birth'. It was real. His father own goat farm and he was helping his father with it. He even provided photo as evidence.
This year I had 2 professors straight up dropped me because I had missed their midterms because the monday of midterms week my close cousin had killed herself, while one teacher just dropped me on the spot the other tried to help and gave me a second chance for the next week. And well my luck was shooting aces because the next monday my uncle (her dad) succumbed to his lung cancer. So I told my teacher about this in an email that monday he replied Wednesday to tell me that he had dropped me because he felt like I was just making excuses. To top it off where I worked was sceptical too so both Friday I got the "this kind of behavior may result in termination" speech. I don't support violence in anyway or fashion but I was about to choke slam the next person I didn't report to that gave me even a dirty look.
Please consider trying to sue the school. As long as there's proof of your family member's passing (which ofc there probably is) you can hopefully try to make up your academic distress. Btw very sorry to hear that about your loved ones.
I once told a professor that I didn’t complete an essay about the Aeneid because I just failed to manage my time well, and he told me that he appreciated my “Roman honesty” and gave me an extension.
I had a high school student who missed over three weeks of class, and a midterm. I tried tracking him down and found out he was living in a homeless shelter. I had him make up the test and gave him extra time. I never mentioned the shelter to him; he was obviously embarrassed about it.
0:35 "Until they were let out of jail"... isn't that a remarkably good excuse? I once used the excuse that there was a bumblebee in my room and I wouldn't leave until I'd guided it safely out back into nature for fear it would starve.
going back to sleep shortly after waking up is an actual popular technique for lucid dreaming, so it's no coincidence that you're getting these lucid dreams.
@@ganjagriffin4426 It's also a good technique for screwing up the start of your day or being late for work. I gotta learn how to be more disciplined with when I wake up.
the professors who have the "drop 1 exam" policy are the best. relieves so much stress about having things like this happen before an exam. and its good for them too because they dont have to listen to so many excuses and can isntead say, "its ok, the missed exam will just be dropped"
Ah fuck I wish we had that. I'd be so much more motivated if I knew I could knock this stupid C grade piece of shit off the list of things dragging my grade down.
Best excuse I ever heard: "I work for . We were on a mission to the Philipines, and we were attacked by pirates in the South China Seas." It was true. I used to tell my students that if they wanted an extension, they had to produce an excuse as good or better. No-one ever did, but that didn't stop them asking. Or me granting them.
In my last year of college, strictly for personal reasons, I took a 300 level nutrition course taught by a wonderful professor who made it crystal clear she tolerated zero excuses. The words No Excuses or No Exceptions were in bold throughout the syllabus and in her office hung an aluminum sign that said No Excuses with a null sign running through it. I think she would have made an exception for this incident. (And only this one!) 😂
@@smallworldafterall09 "in her office hung an aluminum sign that said No Excuses with a null sign running through it." So... no(no excuses)? Wouldn't that mean "excuses"? ;)
I loved this! The dumbest (not most tragic) excuse I have had is that a student forgot that he was in the class and forgot that it met in person on top of that. He had not seen any of the attempted contacts from me or his other instructors. Like, who forgets that they were in class after the first three weeks of the semester?
Brings back memories. I was in my first year, studying abroad in the UK, and almost all subjects had assignments due after the reading week. Some of them had to be handed in physically at the class on Monday. I had completed all of the assignments before Monday but had fallen sick with a high fever on Sunday night. Literally was unconscious for 15hours and woke up at like 5pm on Monday and missed all of the classes so I emailed the teachers my assignments and explained to them my condition as best as I can. I couldn’t see a doctor either as my national health insurance had not been set up yet. One of them didn’t believe me, or maybe they did but was so annoyed by the lack of physical copy - they deducted a whole grade from my assignment. No other feedback was given. Luckily the assignment didn’t count towards the final grade, but i couldn’t forget the experience as it was the first assignment I’ve ever submitted studying abroad…
2:22 I was in an abusive relationship were I was put on "house arrest", so I don't know if this was an excuse or a cry for help. Especially since it's part of most abusive relationships to sabotage the victims career through means like this
I took a test two days after my grandma died and managed to get an 80%. This happened 3 weeks ago. I couldn't ask to postpone the exam (I doubt they would've let me) so I just did it. It's messed me up though, I haven't properly grieved for her. When grandpa died in May 2020, I had a few weeks to grieve before my exam session.
😔 hope you’re doing better today. That’s really tough. It’s quite ridiculous that some educators have no understanding for experiences like the one you described
@@karaliblick7887 thank you, I had completely forgotten I'd commented here. Many people think you're just making it up as an excuse and my uni doesn't really allow you to postpone your exams. Well, I lost my other grandma in late June (in the middle of exams again) so it's just been an awful period. I've got 3 exams left for my bachelor. Graduating will be bittersweet - I can't wait till I'm done but I regret not having studied harder so that my grandparents could've seen me graduate. You learn to deal with loss and it really does come in waves. You can be fine for days, weeks and months, but then you just burst out crying.
@@williamwallace4080 Good luck with your last exams and congratulations on (soon) making it through. I'm sure they had plenty to be proud of outside of your degree work too
My excuses are huge storms causing a power outage before finals week (in spring 2020... when we were entirely online) And depression... thankfully those were both valid enough and my professors were more than accommodating
The house arrest could be legitimate because the student might not have WiFi at home. The student might have always completed assignments at the Library.
But then all the other assignments would have been incomplete. I think only one assignment needed the library for books or other things and since he said he was under house arrest, he couldn't get them.
We once had a new student in our class, who got scolded for not handing in her homework on Friday which was her first day. And the teacher wldn’t let her speak a word, then didn’t believe she was new after she was questioned on whether her mother wld be proud of her. It took our teacher 3 weeks to say ‘sorry,’ to her and that’s all she said. I feel sorry for her awkward introductory and it’s hard moving to a new school..
@@GrubKiller436 this actually happened to a friend of mine, he was going to the toilet before a very important exam, but he got a violent diarrhea that lasted 2 hours
@@anti64 Could be the stress of the exam that induced it. Sometimes I get nervous shits before exams. Weirdly enough they end up being the tests I do the best on. Like a cursed goodluck charm.
0:51 "no details" actually go in profound details, the more you let them now the more they'll let you off the hook and won't want to talk about it. "I'm sick" ---> "oh do you have a doctor's note ? you sure you can't come anyway ?" "I have explosive diarrhea and have been stuck in agony on the toilet seat for 2 hours and a half now" ---> "oh okay"