Homework excuses in Ones and Zeros

You know what aggravates me the most about teaching freshman comp every fall? It’s not the countless and never-ending grammar errors, gaping holes in logic, or lack of critical thought. Nope. It’s the lack of creativity in excuses.  Look, I’m a fiction writer by trade, and the first rule of fiction writing is that it’s gotta be true (the kollege word for that is verisimilitude, but I’m teaching freshman comp, so...we’re gonna avoid kollege words for a while yet). Usually, their’s are of the grandmaw died again variety. I don’t expect a high level of artistic creativity, but most of the excuses are lazy, bordering on disrespectful.  But once in a while…

My favorite of all time was not so much of an excuse as an answer. I also teach a World Lit class and in it, I always include Cervantes’ Man of La Mancha (Don Quixote). I take attendance (sorta) in that class by starting each day with a reading quiz. It’s usually an easy question or two that anyone can answer if they’ve only read the material. One of the questions I ask is what is the name of Don Quixote’s horse? The answer is Rocinante. This student answered “Mustang Sally.” Not only did I give her full credit, I gave her an extra point for originality. If you’re gonna be a bear, be a grizzly, you know? If you’re wrong, own it.

Yesterday, I got an email that moved instantly to second on my all-time favorites list. The student wrote (yes, verbatim): “my computer keeps rebooting and start over, I’m waiting for it to fix it self, so I can finish that assignment, could I turn it in tomorrow or Monday when it stops?”

You take all the time you need, buddy. When it comes to technology, nobody knows better than I that “waiting for it to fix it self” is the best and only true course of action one can take in such situations. And taking the machine to IT is like asking a question at the computer store—eye-rolling and sighing followed by a bunch of giga words they make up on the spot that don’t really mean anything about computer’ish things that may or may not actually exist (and speaking of computer’ish things that may or may not exist—what the hell is up with this “cloud” thing? Where is all that stuff? I keep pushing files there, but who’s keeping up with it? Can it ever get full? I’m telling you, I don’t think anybody really knows for certain. No, I ain’t got it, I thought you had it…). And everything is on it (in it? behind it?)—my Amazon order, banking, medical info, my permanent high school records. Every. Thing. It’s scary.

So, yeah, I could appreciate the frustration. That excuse I liked. I told him to try unplugging it and plugging it back up, see if that fixed it.