Everyone messes up now and then. No matter how good a student you are or were, things happen. We get sick, family stuff, we fall asleep, we just end up procrastinating so long there’s no way to make up the time – whatever it is, I guarantee you you’re better off just telling the truth.
Because teachers, my friends, have heard excuses like these 16, so they really have heard it all.
16. Bless her heart.
Taught instrumental music down in South Texas, so I basically never game any sort of homework outside of practicing.
6th grade – gave the kiddos a super basic theory sheet to complete that was due back in two days since I had a dentist appointment the next day.
When I’m collecting the sheets, a trombone kid tells me “My grandma stole my homework in Mexico and wouldn’t give it back.”
Turns out they were visiting his grandparents over the border outside Matamoros and his grandma really wanted something of his to hang on her refrigerator, so she took the homework he had just finished and put it up. Kid protested, but she wouldn’t relent, so he snapped a pic as proof.
Graded the sheet from the picture. Kid got an A. I got a story.
15. I really want this to be true.
A kid (high-school) claimed that he couldn’t do his homework because his grandmother wouldn’t give him back his textbook…which she had taken in retaliation for his theft of her wooden leg.
14. Ugh I hope he’s ok.
Not a teacher, but happened in my class.
Student was constantly late to first period. Also hardly ever brought in his homework in.
One day, teacher asked him why he was late and why no homework..
“My sister burned down the house this morning”
Everyone laughed, the kid got up and left.
Turns out, his sister did burn down the house. Left her curling iron on some paper or something.
13. Maybe he should try a different route.
The fifth time the same student said he lost his homework running from a dog that was chasing him on the way home.
12. Little brat.
Not a teacher.
My little sister ate my homework in the first grade and no one believed me.
11. Just do it, kid.
Lately it’s always “I couldn’t access the file,” OR my personal favorite, “the (student facing interface) was acting up” like mhmmm okay but you have my e-mail, I have a no-questions-asked extension policy for every assignment, and I assigned this to you 5 days ago.
10. Bless his heart.
Not a teacher, but we had a report due and I waited until the last minute like always. I slept through class mostly and one day I was abruptly woken up and asked for my report and I said half-asleep, “I didn’t do it because my mom died.”
The teacher was disgusted that I would say something so cruel and sent me to the principal’s office. The teacher was called into the principal’s office after they found out I wasn’t joking and was so apologetic.
I wasn’t trying to be a jerk about it, I was just tired.
9. I was expecting the parrot to light the paper on fire.
One kid told me his pet parrot flew onto the fireplace and caught on fire. It then proceeded to fly around the sitting room and the dad tried to hit it with a frying pan because he was afraid the curtains would go up in flames if the parrot went close to them.
The dad hit it onto the kitchen and then grabbed it and threw it under a tap “because you have to throw a parrot under a tap if it’s on fire.” He then said with all the drama he’d forgotten to do his hw.
Of course I let him off because it was the most creative story he’d come up with all year.
8. Some teachers should find new jobs.
Had a student get badly injured in a terrible car crash. She had to have surgery on her face. MOST of us excused her from finals. Some c*nt teachers made her come in.
Her face was all swollen and her mouth was hanging like she’d had a stroke because she hadn’t had the surgery yet.
I told her that her surgery was her final for Anatomy since she was learning more about practical application of anatomy than I could teach in class
7. Not actually an excuse.
The student claimed he put it in a room in his house. He then forgot the room existed. He was at a loss to explain where his homework was. He was upset to think he must have imagined doing it. He apologized to me.
The next week to his amazement he ‘found’ the room, and more amazingly he found his homework. He handed it in that week.
Now this may seem like nonsense, but it turns out he had an operation to remove a tumor from his brain when he was ten. One of the outcomes was a strange side affect that for a short period he could utterly forget a room or more in his house.
True story. Confirmed from his mother and sister.
6. Because that’s a thing that happens.
“I ran out of pencil ink”
5. Yes, they do.
Been a teacher for 2 months, with a lot of submissions being online due to covid protocol, I’ve had the following exchange with many, many students.
“Hey, why didn’t you submit the online homework I set?”
“I e-mailed it to you, it must have not come through”
“That’s unfortunate, would you mind e-mailing it to me again before the end of the day?”
“I can’t, I didn’t save the work”
“If you didn’t save your file, how did you try to e-mail it to me in the first place?”
“No.. err, I meant I deleted the file after I completed the work, I didn’t think I would need it anymore”
“Well, in the future avoid doing that, at least until you have confirmation that I have it. Either way, you should be able to find it in your sent mail, assuming you attached it it will should still be there”
“Visibly panicking Errrr, I deleted my sent e-mails too”
“Wow, you’re incredibly efficient. Well, unfortunately I can’t grade you on your work unless I receive it. Seeing as you’ve already done it before, at least doing it a second time should be a breeze”
Rinse and repeat… I’m a dude in my 20’s first year out of uni. Do they really think I’m that technologically dense?
4. You reap what you sow.
But one of my classmates came with an elaborate story of how he couldn’t do his homework because his dad had to leave that night because he was being deployed over seas and that it was short notice so alot of helping and packing and blah blah blah other stuff had to be done the dude had it done soo well that not only did he manage to waste 10 mins of the lesson but also convince the teacher enough to even get a “Thankyou to your father for his service to the country”.
Towards the end of the period, The kid gets a call to the office that his dad is here to pick him up for a doctor’s appointment.
He had to do the homework 5 times for lying
It was a long ass homework…
3. Didn’t quite think that one through.
I was a TA during uni.
They sent me an email:
Sorry - computer is broken I’ll need an extension.This was early 2000s – so where were they emailing from? If it was the computer lab well then – that’s where they could do the assignment.
But more than that, they were on my ICQ (I let students add me for extra help) so I saw them online pretty much all weekend… I mean if their computer worked well enough for that and to look at pictures of kitties how could they not complete their work?
2. That’s not right.
My senior year I was doing a project with another kid. The day it was due he was walking to school and he got hit by a car and died.
The next day the teacher asked where my project board was and I tell him the kid was carrying it when he died. The a$shole straight up asked if I knew where it ended up.
Sorry teacher, I didn’t think to call and ask his grieving mother if she happens to know where the homework of her not even buried yet son is. Like that is on anyone’s priority list.
1. Dang it, Dad!
“I did the homework the day you gave it to us (which is one week ago), except that I did in an old rough copy of mine and yesterday when I got back from school, dad sold all of our old stationaries for petty cash. I was so mad at my dad, I didn’t do my homework to teach him a lesson. Could you please call home and tell him about this?”
I couldn’t help but laugh xD.
I admit to having tried the crazy story now and again, but the lies are hard to maintain, people.
Share with us in the comments the wildest excuse you ever tried on a teacher – and whether or not it worked.