Every Wildcat has had to have made an excuse at some point for homework to their teacher to get out of doing it. Ukiah High School talked to teachers about the worst excuse they have ever heard from a student.
12th grader Maya Malfavon thinks students make up excuses when talking to teachers thinking they will get an “easier time and maybe a break.” She went on to say, “Freshmen and sophomores think it’s better to lie but as I got older teachers respect it more when you tell them the truth.
Sophomore David Critser says most excuses are made because of procrastination and students “waited too long” and “didn’t have time” to get their work done.
10th grader Ry James thinks students make up wild excuses because they are “scared of judgment of not wanting to do work.” James told us he thinks being honest with the teacher is better and he would likely say, “I don’t want to do this work. This is wack.”
9th grader Haylee Simms offered that students give excuses to their teachers because “they just don’t want to get in trouble.”
10th grader Michael Hannah-DeLong says students make up excuses because “they don’t have the willpower to do the work” and they are “not willing to own up they don’t have the time.”
Band teacher Audrey McCombs told us the worst excuse she has heard was a student who told he they could not play their instruments because they had recently seen “some goat organs.”
English teacher Kyle Ontiveros remembered a time when a student over Zoom couldn’t turn on their Chromebook camera because they were at a rodeo and it was almost their turn “to ride the horse.”
Sometimes the best excuses are the simplest. Math teacher Adelaida Torres remembered the student who looked her straight in the face and simply said, “I forgot that we had homework”
Some excuses are so wild that teachers wish they had proof they were true. Spanish teacher Derian Palmerin said a student claimed his “little brother ripped their paper” and Palmerin was so suspicious that “I wish he would have brought the paper to show me that it was ripped”
Some excuses are so bad we wonder why the student even gave it. For instance, English teacher Kyle Kirkley told us that a student told him he didn’t complete a homework assignment because he “had to go to the movies”. The student went on to ask Mr. Kirkley if he could skip the assignment altogether because “the movie was so good”
Agriculture teacher Amanda Potter came across one of the most classic examples of a student excuse we could think of. Their class had to make cereal boxes for a class project and one student said, “I promise you, and I’m not making this up, but my dog did eat my homework and sent a photo of the cereal box they made with actual bite marks in it.”
Sadie DeMarta, one of Ukiah High’s Agriculture teachers, told us probably one of the most believable excuses of the bunch. A student told her that a goat ate their homework highly likely given it was an ag student known to have farm animals.
Similar to Ms. DeMarta, History teacher Zackary Anderson had a student who had an excuse involving their homework being chewed on. The student’s notebook had been “slobbered and gnawed” on claimed they couldn’t turn the work in by the end of the week because of how damaged it was.
The student Wynona Idica told us about one that could win the award for the wackiest and craziest excuse we heard. Idica told us a student claimed that on their way to school “their mom dropped ketchup from a breakfast burrito on her lap.” To clean up, they pulled over to the side of the road and the student’s mother grabbed the closest thing available to clean the ketchup: that student’s homework.
After the assignment was covered in sticky ketchup, the student’s mother supposedly, “crumple[d] it and [threw] it on the side of the road.”
The story doesn’t end there. The pair continued to school and “hit traffic” due to construction when “a homeless man was running around on the street.” With all those excuses, Ms Idica’s student said, “That’s why they couldn’t come to class and that’s why they didn’t have their homework.”
Whew! That one was a doozy!
Freshman Advisory teacher Hector Toscano remembered one time when a student said that they weren’t feeling up to do their work. Seconds later he then sees the student playing video games on their Chromebook acting perfectly fine.
Catalina Cowen is a freshman in the Ukiah High school journalism class. She loves baking and hanging out with friends. She joined journalism because she likes writing about things that happen in the town around her. Catalina was born in Ukiah, California which is a big reason why she wanted to write about the city she is from. She looks forward to writing for the Ukiah High School Journalism class in her future years in High school.
