
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 3, 1993                   TAG: 9305010261
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

STUDENTS WILL TRY ANY EXCUSE

Douglas A. Bernstein, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois, recently asked faculty members on an electronic-mail network for "the most unusual, bizarre and amazing student excuses" they had ever heard. He got dozens of replies.

"As you read," he told readers of APS Observer, the journal of the American Psychological Society, "keep in mind that many of these excuses (and most that weren't funny enough to include) actually turn out to be true." Here is a sampling:

\ GRANDPARENTAL DEATH: This old favorite needs no description, but one professor's class established what must be a world's record when 14 out of 250 students reported their grandmothers' dying just before final exams.

\ AUTOMOBILE PROBLEMS:"I had an accident, the police impounded my car, and my paper is in the glove compartment."

\ ANIMAL TRAUMA: "I can't be at the exam because my cat is having kittens and I'm her coach."

"I can't take the test because my dog is having a Caesarean section."

\ CRIME VICTIMIZATION:"I need to take the final early because the husband of the woman I am seeing is threatening to kill me."

"I missed the final because when I went to the convenience store yesterday, it was robbed and the robber locked me and the clerk in the basement until this morning."

\ OTHER: "I'm too happy to give my presentation tomorrow." (The contributor noted, "This was easily fixed.")

"My paper is late because I lost a pair of eyeballs and I couldn't do anything else till I found them." (The student worked in an eye bank.)

"I'm too depressed to take the exam; I just found my girlfriend in bed with another man."

Finally, there is the excuse given by two students who, after sitting next to each other during an exam, were asked why their answer sheets contained identical responses to different versions of the test: "We studied together."

by CNB