For college students, being late on homework is sometimes unavoidable.
But instead of just being honest about their mistake, many students tend to create obscenely elaborate excuses as to why their homework is not finished. Salt Lake Community College adjunct math professor Karl Schatten says he has heard almost every excuse possible, and the details are always impeccable.
Schatten recalls one student telling him, “My three-year-old sister decided she was hungry and got on the table, picked up a jar of jam and dropped it and broke it right on top of my report, covering the whole thing.” He adds the best part of the excuse was that the student’s father, who just happened to have the computer where the report was saved, was on a plane and could not be reached.
Some reasons for missing homework are completely reasonable and valid, such as a medical emergency, a death of a close relative, or the occasional technical glitch. But for some students, it seems the more elaborate the excuse, the more sympathy they think they will receive.
Schatten’s favorite excuse to date was a young man whose girlfriend called him while she was having a meltdown.
Schatten says the student told him that he had just printed his report and set it on top of some papers on his father’s desk when he took the phone call outside to console his upset girlfriend. While he was outside, his father came home and used the computer to check email, and closed out his son’s unsaved, yet printed story.
After the father checked his email, he took the stack of papers and put them in the shredder, not knowing his son’s report was on top. When the son returned to the computer to check for his story, the young man stated “only the first paragraph was there.”
Why students make up excuses about missed homework is really anyone’s guess. But the consequences can be much more significant than a zero on an assignment. In an article for Psychology Today, University of Massachusetts-Amherst psychology professor Susan Krauss Whitborne says students who make a habit of making excuses are really creating a false self, and denying themselves of their full potential.
Ultimately, professors want their students to learn the skills they need to succeed. And students need to be honest with their professors and themselves. For whatever reason an assignment is late, telling the truth makes a difference.
