At Ladue High School, students and teachers alike have their “busy days.” During these days, as we all know, work is virtually impossible to achieve, what with sports, club meetings, family events, and distracting technology. Yet, there are ample responsibilities to fulfill: students have homework to complete and teachers have papers to grade. Come the bell at the start of class, if the work is not done, there is only one option: finding an excuse. For a truly comprehensive compilation of the most outrageous excuses Ladue has to offer, I turned to the student body.

Top 10 Ladue Student Excuses

10. “I didn’t think the teacher was going to collect it.”

9. “I got lazy and went to sleep”

8. “I left my backpack out in the rain and it ruined my homework.” –John Jaeger

7. “I kept on getting distracted by technology.”

6. “I swear I had it just a minute ago.”

5. “I fell asleep on it and the drool smudged the ink.”

4. “We got 10 people in the class to ‘not know’ about the quiz.”

3. “Saved my teacher from having to grade it” –Hannah Jacks

2. “I accidentally shredded it in my mom’s paper shredder.” –Olivia Adkins

1. “My worksheets got pomegranate juice on them. I put them in the oven because I thought they would dry in there, but they caught on fire.” –Ting Ding

Note: Uncited quotes either are kept anonymous or pertain to the public domain.

I highly doubt that any of the above excuses qualify as a valid reason for a teacher to allow an extension, although these excuses are certainly better than nothing, for having something to say is better than not having anything to say at all. To quote Mason Cooley, “Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.”

However, if one were to truly examine the art of generating a coherent, logical excuse, he must observe both sides of the coin. In this case, the opposing side includes the ways in which teachers themselves justify not having had the time to grade their students’ work (to be discussed in Part II).