Excuses, Excuses

Excuses, Excuses Even though some excuses for turning in work late as seen in “The Dog Ate My Disk, and Other Tales of Woe” by Carolyn Foster Segal, some excuses given are legitimate for turning in late work. Some unforeseeable events, such as traffic accidents, death in the family, weather that causes an evacuation, and a fire are just a few are all events that students can not control, which result in turning in late work. It is Monday morning, students are on their way to the first class period of the day, their paper is due first thing as they walk in the door.

Tragedy strikes on their way to school as a mo-torists runs a red light, t-boning the students car and causing a major accident. However the stu-dent could have emailed the assignment to the professor, this professor only accepts copies in pe-rson. The student did not predict the accident he/she would be involved in this morning, or maybe he/she would have left a little later, or a little earlier, or even taken a different route to school that day. Family members getting into an accident could go either way, depending on who the family member is and where they are located.

If a distant cousin from four hundred miles away gets into a fender bender, teachers will probably be very skeptical to accept late work. However a mother, father, or immediate family member, gets into an automobile accident could be an acceptable excuse for turning in late work. A death in the family is a very tragic occurrence and could have many different effects on the student and their work they are planning to turn in. Segal states “ What heartless student would lie, wish death on a revered family member, just to avoid a deadline? (461) Hopefully no student would use a death in the family to avoid a deadline. Death is not to be taken lightly, nor used in a demeaning manner. Segal also says, “What heartless teacher would dare to question a student’s grief or veracity? ”(461). Hopefully no teacher or professor would call their students out or question that their was a death in their family. Letting the professor know exactly what is going on and when the student will turn in their paper is a proper course of action, to avoid receiving an F for the assignment or incomplete in the class.

Nothing is more frightening than having to pack bags and evacuate due to serious and catastrophic weather. Students and teachers, not knowing what to expect when the storm passes, or what damage could come of their campus or surrounding areas. When a storm is a brewing miles away and expecting to hit in the next week, students are not worried about an assignment, they are focused on packing the must haves when evacuating and arriving somewhere out of harms way. Most teachers probably allow students to turn their work in after the storm has passed and once the school opens back up to regular hours.

Weather is a unstable force, the storm could hit further away or not be as strong as anticipated, but students do not focus on their school work at this time. Giving them a legitimate excuse for not turning their work in on time, because they were forced to evacuate due to storms and unforeseeable damages that may occur. Fires destroy many homes and buildings each year, leaving the occupants without a roof over their head. In the event of a fire, people are taught not to try and save anything from their houses, dorms, and apartments.

Their main goal is to get to safety, and let the fire department do their job at extinguishing the fire. A student that is the victim of a fire, should be allowed to turn their work in late, especially if they have lost most if not all of their things in the fire. Sunday night, the student is putting the finishing touches on their paper due Monday morning, and their computer crashes, not allowing them to save any material to a disc, or thumb drive can be very upsetting. The student arrives in class and tells their professor that the reason they are not turning their paper in was because their computer crashed the night before.

This could happen, and not allow the student adequate time to go to their nearest computer lab or library on campus and redo their paper. This common occurrence with computers and technology could give the students an extension to resubmit their assignment at a later day. This would be at the profess-ors discretion of course, or the professor could ask for proof that the action that did happen, truly did happen. This returns to the question from the death in a family section, just in different words: Would a teacher actually question, why a student is turning their work in late or not.

Excuses are thrown around colleges and schools like jokes at a comedy club. Some excuses are just absurd and just a reason for students to get out of doing their assignments; others are legitimate reasons as to why they are not turning their assignment in. The bad excuses make the legitimate excuses seem untrue and just another excuse, that students will use to get out of an assignment. Work Cited Segal, Carolyn Foster. “The Dog Ate My Disk, and Other Tales of Woe” Patterns for College Writing. 12th ed. Ed. Laurie G Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Boston: Bedford, 2012 460-463. Print.