As the school workload increases and students are still not recovered from the summer daze, excuses begin to form when assignments fail to get done.

While the clichs students use, ranging from, ‘My computer broke down,’ to, ‘The illegal dog I’m keeping on South Campus ate my homework,’ are already becoming daily occurrences, many times teachers will simply not extend a deadline, no matter what students say. It is then up to the student to be a little more creative to get away with their procrastination.

‘I once lied and told a teacher that I was Jewish to get out of a big project, and that I couldn’t do any work over the holiday weekend,’ said Alexandra Mirjah, a junior magazine major.

College students are notorious for laziness when it comes to work, as they will wait until the last minute to get things done. Oftentimes it is this exact strategy that will explode and cause disaster. In this digital age, the wonders of technology can often cause the largest problems. Personal computers break down, printers jam with paper and files are randomly sacrificed and lost forever – students are left to reap the consequences and deal with it in the upcoming class. It is because of these incidents that students beg with professors for an extension, and are often flat-out rejected. Students should write a paper days before it’s due, so if something breaks the student is at fault, said Professor Bill Coplin, director of the public affairs department at Syracuse University.

Yet for students the problem is often not technical, but a lack of work ethic. Students living on a college campus will immediately drop schoolwork if something bigger and better comes along. Trouble then arises when the student never returns to complete the task, and by the time the due dates roll around, the work is still left in its abandoned and unfinished state.

‘Everything that surrounds us is distracting, and there’s so much to do that is more fun than sitting down and doing your homework,’ said Claudia Gilmore, a freshman photojournalism major. ‘People just don’t want to work, especially now after the summer holidays.’

Often, students dealing with unfinished projects or tests they are unprepared for will tell professors wild stories in the hopes of appealing to their sympathetic or humorous side.

‘I’ve gotten some very cute notes from students,’ said Marvin Druger, chair of the Department of Science Teaching and professor of biology and science education. ‘One once told me, ‘I’m sorry I missed your class. My mother said I have a severe case of the flu, but what would she know? She’s only a nurse.”

Many students blame being unprepared for a long-term college schedule as a reason for not getting work in on time. College courses are often time-structured to have only a midterm paper and a final, which means there are only two things that must be produced over a 15-week period. This becomes a problem for people who can’t or never will learn how to mange their time, and try to pull all-nighters the day before to finish it. While this strategy works for some, students are often left with nothing but lack of sleep.

The pressures of college can be too much for students, and when it accumulates, students are driven to extreme measures of work avoidance. Last year, there was a psychology test Mirjah was not ready for, but she needed to do well on it to pass the class. Instead of accepting the consequences of not studying, she called her mom to fax over a report of a car accident she was in three months before. Mirjah changed the dates on the papers to make it seem like it just happened and passed it in with a plea for an extension. The teacher moved the test date to two weeks later.

‘Some teachers will compromise, but I don’t think any of them will completely buy any excuse,’ said Jennifer Sricharoenchaikit, a senior public relations major. ‘They’ve done it themselves, they’ve been there, and they hear them all the time, so I’m sure they appreciate the more creative ones.’

Excuses are not always conjured up because of unfinished work, but possibly because of skipped classes that could cost valuable points towards their grade. Many classes only give a few unexcused absences before students’ marks are seriously affected, and it is for these types of classes that students will spin outrageous tales to rationale a missed lecture and why their grade should be spared.

‘I once got a great note from a student,’ Druger said. ‘It said, ‘I would like to apologize for missing your BIO121 lecture today. Finally, the rigors of hard work and long nights got the better of me and I slept through your class. I should note that I was happily dreaming of a wonderful world of biology while engaged in my irresponsible slumber. I hope you understand.’ I saved that one.’

While college is frequently the place where people get some of their best work done, it’s often finished too late for anyone to appreciate it, or accept it in the case of a due date. Students have to be as creative in their reasons for lateness as in the work itself. Yet, often it seems professors have heard every excuse in the book and most dismiss the student’s plea, expecting them to learn a lesson about getting it in on time.

‘In college, skills are everything, nothing else counts and one of the skills is time management. I think it’s important to punish bad time management and reward good ones,’ Coplin said. ‘It’s a matter of growing up and maturing and taking responsibility that makes us successful adults.’

Published on September 6, 2005 at 12:00 pm