Thursday, January 9, 2014

Eldon in Edmonton Asks a Big Thirsty for the Ages. "What are Good Excuses?"


I'm in my first year of uni teaching. Yay for me. But I'm already snowed under with excuses for all kinds of things: "Here's why I can't come next week." "Here's why I don't have the book, and WON'T have the book." "Here's why I'm a day late with the assignment."

Q: How on earth do you deal with all of them, and does allowing some mean they will push for ALL of them to be accepted? What do YOU do about student excuses? Which excuses are good - or the ones you'll always accept? How do you know which ones are just basically lies? Can you stop them?

27 comments:

  1. I love this question and I can't wait to see what others have to say!

    The way that I handle excuses is that I tell them they don't need any in most circumstances. "Most" means when they have not done homework, or come to class on the day of a quiz, or missed any take-home or in-class assignments other than either an exam or an essay. I have a built in number of dropped lowest grades from each of those categories (usually two) and after that, they get a zero. No matter what happened.

    For either an exam or an essay, I'll let them reschedule or hand it in late if they have had a situation that could not be prevented, and if they have not made this a recurring theme in the class. I have a list of such reasons (I don't like to call them excuses----if you were hospitalized, for example, I'd hardly think of that as an excuse) in my syllabus, but at the end, I also add "and at the discretion of the instructor" because some things you just can't think up on your own, but in my students' world, such things do happen.

    I also give my students one "get of jail free card" which they can use to get an extension up to one week on an essay. They can, one time only, get an extension just because they overslept, were too stressed, turned 21, whatever.

    As I write this here, it seems complicated. But since I've been doing things this way, I've had more success than before, and more satisfaction from the students who are working hard.

    The other type of student is never satisfied anyway.

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    1. Oh and for the list of acceptable reasons, each one of them can easily be supported with written documentation, While sometimes this leads to a student giving me hassles, I stick to my policy of no documentation, no extension, because if I did not, all hell would break loose.

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  2. Good excuses include serious illness (their own, a child or other family member), death of a close friend or family member, dangerously bad weather (some students commute up to 2 hours), and grad school interviews. As I tell them on the first day of class, "If the sh*tstorm surrounding you is such that you miss an exam, there WILL be a paper trail. I just need to see a piece of it. You can then take a final exam, without a penalty." If they don't have any sort of documentation, they can still take a make-up exam, with a 10 point penalty (each exam is worth 100 points).

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    1. That's exactly it----when a shit storm happens, there is a paper trail. You can list some things that could qualify (serious illness, death in family, car accident, required court appearance) but inevitably, there is a way to show it was something serious that could not be prevented or scheduled differently.

      Incidentally, if a student wants to claim they had a close connection with someone who died----I don't ever question it. No need to prove any kind of connection. If they are lying, then they are lying. IF they are not, then how could I possibly put them through "proving" they loved someone who died? They DO have to either link me to the online obituary or bring the paper handout/brochure of the services they attended. I've only had one student ever question that, and she asked me if I needed her to dig up her dead husband. She complained to the Dean of Students, who backed me (they regularly ask for obituaries too, it turns out). Later, we found out that her husband had not, in fact, died.

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    2. One of my students claimed a friend of his had died in a car accident. I empathized with him and didn't even ask for evidence (I'm rather bad at such encounters). He sent me the obituary anyway. The accident happened several days AFTER the exam he missed. Lying students always say just a little bit too much.

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  3. Just smile and follow every policy set by the university. No matter what may policy there may be in place, or any policy you set, they find a way around it.

    Last term I had a very high number of students go to the counseling office and get extensions for stress related problems. It appears there is one person in that office who simply agrees with every claim of stress that comes his/her way.

    I've finished trying to fight the nonsense; however (and this will upset some readers) if I think the excuse is bullshit I mark harder than I may normally. You want to know what stress really feels like? Try this grade numb nuts.

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    1. No, grading "more accurately" is a perfectly reasonable way to handle the stress they caused on you.

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  4. My policy on late work is that I don't take it. Because I give ample time to complete the work, and the Dropbox has a clearly stated deadline posted in the calendar, there is no excuse for late work that I will take (save death in family, accident--the standards). Time management is a skill they have to learn, and allowing late work makes more work for me (to create exceptions, or dig through email) and postpones their learning how to manage the workload. If that makes me sound harsh, I'm ok with that. I have had students who worked third shift, came to class, and did all their work on time. I have had students whose children were hospitalized 100 miles away who wouldn't take an extension I offered and insisted on turning their work in on time. In two recent semesters, I have had students whose mothers died, and after a week's absence to deal with the details, they returned to class and completed the work--despite my offer of an Incomplete (so they could finish the work under less pressure). So excuses about "I ran out of time" are bullshit, for the most part.

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  5. The best (or worst) excuse I got from a student was right around midterms. She hadn't turned in a paper, and she emailed me to say that she was 6hours away the day of the midterm helping her sister's family because the brother in law had been in a terrible farming accident, and they weren't sure he was going to make it. Of course I okayed an extension...right up til I talked to my office neighbor (in a different department) who had a question about a student who emailed about funeral arrangements for her brother in law, who had been killed in a farming accident. It was the same student, who had sent two different emails with slightly different info, and out of chronological order (my email about him possibly not making it came after the email to my colleague about his funeral). We tracked down another of her profs (half hour after the student would have sat my midterm had she not been 6 hours away), and when I poked my head into the room, there sat my student. I shook my head at her, went to my office, and wrote her an email suggesting she drop my class.

    She dropped out completely not long after that.

    Epic. Fail.

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  6. My policy is that there are no excused absences or late assignments. There is a very modest penalty for every absence or missed assignment and it is up to them to decide if their emergency requires taking it.
    I state in my syllabus that they do not need to explain why they miss class or fail to turn in an assignment, although I'll appreciate if, out of politeness, they let me know they won't attend class. I ask them not to explain me the reasons for their absences -- drama being emotionally exhausting. Missed quizzes are averaged with the rest of the quizzes (about 12 a semester) but they have to make up the exams (3) within seven days of the date of the exam. If they don't, I will void all the exams in the semester and they will bet the exam part of the course on the final exam.
    On one hand, I treat them as adults who are mature enough to decide wether attending their roommate's girlfriend's pet canary funeral is a valid reason to miss class. On the other, as students who, by definition, are lying liars who lie.

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  7. There are reasons and then there are excuses. Reasons can be anything and I don't care about any of them. Excuses actually justify a late homework assignment or missed exam. I follow my university's policies. Our Dean of Students' office verifies all doctor's notes, funerals and any other school-approved excuse. When they verify the absence, I make arrangements with the student. This covers 99% of issues without much work or decision making on my part.

    My advice is to find out your school's policy and norms for acceptable excuses and follow those, at least until you gain more experience dealing with students.

    A student is always excused from class due to his or her own death.

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    1. Bullshit! The relatives MUST BRING IN THE CORPSE!!

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    2. Yeah, you're right. I'm a big softie. I'll revise my syllabus for the fall. But it needs to be fresh or at least frozen. I don't need anything stinking up my office.

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    3. I want to SEE WORMS! I want to SMELL DEATHFUNK!!

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  8. I don't take late homework, but on the other hand they have a week to do between three and five problems (for my current upper-division class; the problems are not all routine). The lowest two homework grades (of twelve) are dropped, so there's no reason for excuses.

    And I tell them there will be no make-ups of tests or quizzes, even if they have a valid reason. They're allowed to drop one test and one quiz grade, so if they have to miss it, that's the grade they drop. (It's all on the syllabus.) I don't tell them, but if they miss a second one due to a medical emergency and bring the paperwork from the hospital E.R., I relent and give them another test (this happened once last semester.)

    My experience is that keeping their workload lower than they expect and giving them lots of time lets me get away with not hearing excuses. So my students rarely even try. If they have a real reason and can prove it (and there is evidence they're taking the course seriously) I can make exceptions, but I don't tell them in advance.

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  9. I don't accept late work, ever, for any reason. In my classes, most of the homework problems are online and they can submit those from anywhere they have a working internet connection. For work that is due in class, it is due at the beginning of class and I won't accept anything after the first 15 minutes. I will vary rarely make exceptions to that rule for unavoidable circumstances that can be verified, but I don't tell them that beforehand.

    As for missed exams and quizzes, my university has a policy and that's what I follow. Everything must be documented and I need to be contacted within 48 hours of a missed exam in order for a make up to be arranged.

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  10. The ONLY good excuse is a letter from the local Party chairman, countersigned by the local KGB man.

    No American will ever have a decent excuse.

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  11. I am a full professor and a former department chair with tenure, over 150 students per semester, and an active research program, one of only three in my department. I therefore don't allow much, and experience has taught me that I shouldn't.

    Excuses that I allow include illness documented by a physician's note, deaths in the immediate family that can be documented, and documented job interviews. Since I too have had to deal with a tough cookie with the temerity to feign an angry affront when lying about a funeral, the following is directly from my syllabus:

    "Concerning funerals or family emergencies: I am sorry, and I don't want to seem hard or mean, but I will need documentation of attendance at any funeral or family emergency, which includes the dates the student is gone. This is necessary because I am being asked to give a student an exception that could be seen as favoritism which affects her or his grade, and I need to be able to show why I allowed that. Other excuses that will be accepted for being marked 'excused' for exams, labs, or assignments include paper copies of a physician's or counselor's note for the student or a legal dependent, the cover sheet from a hospital discharge, or a police record in which the student is listed as the victim of a crime, jury duty, or military service requirements."

    I never, never, never, never, never accept late work or give advance or make-up exams. For all of these, I just mark the students with properly documented excuses as "excused," and therefore put more weight on the final exam, which already counts 35% for the general-ed course, and 50% for the intermediate physics course for engineers. One of them cluelessly sniveled at me why so much, and I screamed, "BECAUSE YOU KIDS CHEAT TOO MUCH!" That held the little bastard.

    For the general-ed course, I have two mid-term exams, only the higher of which counts: it does reduce the number of dead grandmothers to fewer than two per semester. Anyone missing a final exam for a documented reason gets an Incomplete, just as if they'd been sick; anyone missing a final exam for no reason gets a zero. Again, from my syllabus:

    "...If any student's parents or anyone else buys that student a plane ticket or otherwise arranges for that student to leave the Fresno area at the end of the term, the party who bought the ticket or made these arrangements is responsible for knowing when the Final Exam for this course is, and that students are not allowed to miss the Final Exam for this course for any reason other than an illness documented by a physician's note, or else that student will get a 0% on the Final Exam."

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  12. I have a list in my syllabus of what will almost always be approved, provided its documented in advance, and what will almost never be approved (family vacations, "I have to work", career fairs).

    But I never approve anything after the fact unless it comes from the Dean of Students.

    In general my rule is that I am very flexible if a student comes to me before the missed work (and it's not one of the the three above) but I am totally inflexible if a student comes to me after the missed work.

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  13. Very early in my career, I had a 7:30 am class which only had about 8 students in it. One student always showed up early. One day when she came in, she smelled like she had been sleeping next to a campfire all night, and the exterior of her textbook was browned. I asked what happened, and she said her house had burnt down that night. I was flabbergasted. I told her she did not need to come in, but she said that even though what happened had been rough, she really wanted to come in, since class was a "normal" thing, and she wanted something normal in her life right then. It was then I realized that no one would be able to give me a good excuse for missing a class, when I had someone show up for a 7:30 am class after her house burnt down.

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  14. Oh, and how do you know they are lies? Nearly all of them are. I never trust anything a student says, because even if it isn't a deliberate lie, it's almost always just plain wrong, because they can't read, write, or think, much beyond 6th-grade level. They certainly can't do math at 8th-grade level: I estimate that fewer than 1 in 100, and probably fewer than one in 1000, can. You can't stop them from lying to you, since they think that you are stupid, much stupider than they are. Sorry!

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    1. These is where my laborcamp system comes in.....

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  15. I don't even listen to their excuses because I want to punch them when they start whining and justifying their lives. So I've stopped listening to that. But I do have a list of "life events" that are excusable, for which they may bring documentation and then we negotiate from there.

    I had a student check himself out of a hospital AMA to show up for the final exam (he was having water withdrawn from his heart, he said). As soon as the final was over, his buddy took him back to the hospital. I tell students that I wouldn't advise going to that extreme, but just using that example in class when I talk about what's "excusable" and what's not, helps to put things in perspective.

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  16. I am thankful for professors who have a more flexible lateness policy. In two history classes, as I was finishing a major paper, I realized that the theses I started out with needed to completely change. So, the papers needed a major rewrite. I probably could have stayed with the original theses and still done decent work, but I emailed the professors ahead of the deadline, explained why, and asked politely if they would accept a paper a few days late. Again, am thankful to the instructors who gave me a break.

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  17. I had a student tell me a horrific tale of family death..when the university tried to confirm it, the supposedly dead parent answered the phone. The following year I was hired full-time at a local CC, and ran into the student. At first she smiled and started to greet me, I gave her a look and she turned away embarrassed. Oops

    I teach a lot of online sections and have everything but my logic class assignments due online. I don't take late work on smaller assignments, except for documented medical emergencies or military orders. When they want to turn in late stuff anyway, I ask them how I can help them while still being fair to others in their class. That usually stumps them.

    The best/worst student 'excuse' was the semester I was doing chemo for breast cancer. The little punk tried to tell me he couldn't turn in a paper for my 745 class because he was sitting by his aunt's bedside because she had breast cancer. I told him that he should let her sleep and come in to turn in the paper.. Funny, he dropped the course.

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    1. And I hope you made a speedy and complete recovery! That has got to be the all-time topper.

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