The motivation
While I am nominally a professor of physics (someone who has expertise in practicing physics), I sometimes feel like a professor of excuses (someone who has expertise in recognizing excuses).
One of the side effects of teaching, mentoring, grading and assessing undergraduate and graduate students and postdocs for almost fifteen years at a university is that I have become intimately familiar with an impressive variety of excuses made by people who present their work to me.
To be sure, the majority of students are a complete pleasure to work with, and are models of punctuality and conscientiousness, the kind of people you would like to clone. But there is a good number who regularly generate a spectrum of excuses, ranging from the mundane to the spectacularly lurid.
I flatter myself that I have arrived at a stage where I can tell - already when the student or postdoc is standing at the door to my office, but has not yet entered, sat down, or started talking - how much work they have done and what level of excuses they will employ. Their body language usually gives it all away.
Below I present a partial list, assembled to give a flavor to my students (so they know not to use these and similar excuses); maybe some others will also find it useful:
A list of samples
i) Dr. B, I could not do the work because: I was studying for my finals (they are three weeks away)/my computer crashed (the modern equivalent of the dog-ate-the-homework excuse)/I had too much project work due (the project teachers told me the student was not handing in any work to them either)/if I had taken time out to do the work assigned to me I would have lost my job or become homeless.
ii) Dr. B, I could not come to class because: the carpet at home caught fire (the arsonist could not be traced)/the tread on my car tires was so shallow it would have been dangerous to drive to school/I had to go to the doctor (a prescription is never available)/I had to go home for a funeral (often several times a semester, casting doubts on family longevity)/I am in love with a classmate and I feel terrible attending class because her boyfriend is also a classmate.
iii) Dr. B, I want you to know that I am working really hard on the course material. This is usually advanced by a student who is not near the top of the class. It's kind of cute that they don't realize the professor can see them coming from a mile away.
Also, a straightforward rebuttal doesn't usually work; one has to reply in the same coin as the student, something like: 'And I want you to know I am working really hard on giving you a good grade'.
iv) Dr. B this is such a stupid mistake I made on the exam: A classic move used by a student who wants me to reply: 'Oh that's not so bad - here's an extra point to make you feel better.'
Conclusion
An excuse is more than a mechanism for justifying the absence of a result; it is a technique for avoiding taking responsibility for our own actions. No genuine professional - or human being - does that.
But since we are weak, we are not always strong enough to take responsibility - I can recall instances from my own childhood when I could and would produce excuses effortlessly. Getting out of this habit, and taking responsibility for our actions, requires conscious practice and cultivation of character.
Just so we don't get too serious about this I will end by linking some amusing excuses reported by other teachers.
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