{"id":954,"date":"2006-05-09T05:02:44","date_gmt":"2006-05-09T05:02:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2006\/05\/best-excuse-ever-survey.html"},"modified":"2006-05-09T05:02:44","modified_gmt":"2006-05-09T05:02:44","slug":"best-excuse-ever-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/05\/best-excuse-ever-survey.html","title":{"rendered":"Best Excuse Ever Survey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What is the best (story-wise) excuse you&#8217;ve had from a student for why he or she can&#8217;t turn something in on time or come to class?<!--more|inline--><br \/>\nOne student came to me, frazzled and with a retinue of happy friends, with this story, if I can get my facts straight. He was going to his room to finish his paper. It happened to be 3:30am. But, on the way he had to go see a friend down the street. On the way he got in between some gang members, and they held him up and stood him up next to a car. They had a gun to his head and to his side. He didn&#8217;t have much money. They stole his money and wallet. Then he had to call the police, and he had to file a report, and then he was so scared and pumped when he got back (around 7:30am) that he didn&#8217;t have time to get it done. &#8220;Can I turn it in tomorrow?,&#8221; he asked.<br \/>\nI asked him if he was an English Major (read: Fiction writer and story teller).<br \/>\nAnother student e-mailed me to get out of a MidTerm. She had missed more sessions than she should have, and this was a Jesus class, so I expected a little honesty. She asked to be excused from a MidTerm date because a close family friend had died and the funeral was at the time of the MidTerm. It was one of those things: I was sure she was &#8220;writing&#8221; fiction. So, I said to her, &#8220;Sure, just bring the Funeral Bulletin and then I&#8217;ll give you the Exam.&#8221; She delayed a week or two. Finally, she came to me with the Bulletin &#8212; it was a 92 year former priest who had died, and he hadn&#8217;t served in the parish since the 1960s and she was born in about 1980. Her comment, &#8220;Well, not exactly a family friend, but my grandma knew him well.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is the best (story-wise) excuse you&#8217;ve had from a student for why he or she can&#8217;t turn something in on time or come to class?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Best Excuse Ever Survey - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/05\/best-excuse-ever-survey.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Best Excuse Ever Survey - 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