Lincoln’s fall semester ends in early December, which means Thanksgiving is just a brief respite before the rush of the last week of classes.
Over the past few days, I’ve been getting my share of e-mails from students concerned about passing my courses. When the semester began, I made my expectations clear: no excuses, no missed assignments and no extra credit.
Some of my students didn’t take my expectations seriously and are now scrambling to figure out a way not to retake the courses in the spring semester or next fall. Some of the students have owned up to their lack of seriousness for the first 13 weeks of the semester and have put in an extra effort to somehow salvage their grades.
However, others haven’t been so contrite. When I’ve confronted a couple of students on why they haven’t turned in assignments and why they’re failing my class, they’ve given me the “See what had happened was…” excuse.
The “See what had happened was…” excuse is common in college. Students get creative in trying to figure out excuses to gain sympathy from their instructors in order to save themselves from a failing grade.
Once, a student sent me an email noting that she wasn’t in class because she had been admitted to the hospital and would be staying there for a few days. That would have seemed plausible had I not run into that same student hanging outside of a classroom talking to a friend just 10 minutes after I read her email!
