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The student news site of Colonia High School

The Declaration

The student news site of Colonia High School

The Declaration

The days of my dog ate my homework might be over

Students+are+getting+more+creative+with+their+excuses+for+not+doing+their+homework
Photo Credit: Stephanie Polonis
Students are getting more creative with their excuses for not doing their homework

Students at CHS have had some crazy excuses for not doing their homework lately. People already know the old-school ‘dog ate it’ excuse, but these new-school excuses have evolved to a higher level.

Amardeep Kaur, a freshman at Colonia High School, is able to contribute to this topic. In her classes every now and then there’s that person who doesn’t do their homework. Kaur said, “The day after we have a substitute there’s always that kid that says he handed it in to the sub and the person who lies about emailing it.” This is a frustrating process for Kaur and students alike who take the time to do their homework.

The amount of homework students get has gradually increased over the years. According to the 2007 Metlife Study , about 50% of high school students spend more than an hour on homework every night. The other half percentage of students are obviously staying up until midnight creating their own breed of anti-homework dogs dedicated to devouring every last piece of paper with homework on it. While that may be an extreme fallacy, (creating a breed of anti-homework dogs is clearly an A+ biology assignment) it certainly seems students are putting more time into their excuses rather than actually doing their homework.

Every now and then students try to pull the ‘I was too busy,’ card to their teachers. “Oh but I didn’t get home until 10 o’clock last night because my football game lasted longer than expected,” or the occasionally angelic, “I was spending the day completing my community service hours.” The fact is that students have other obligations to school other than doing their homework at night, but do these obligations have more value than doing homework is the question teachers and students need to ask.

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How often do you give a teacher an excuse for not doing your homework?

  • Very little (1-2 times per month) (32%, 39 Votes)
  • Never, I'm always honest (31%, 38 Votes)
  • Sometimes (5-10 times per month) (20%, 24 Votes)
  • All of the time (10%, 12 Votes)
  • Often (at least once per week) (8%, 10 Votes)

Total Voters: 123

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Danielle Simkovich, a English teacher at Colonia High school for ten years. She teaches a mix of classes. One of the most common excuses that Ms. Simkovich gets is the overused ‘left-it-in-the-locker’ excuse. Ms. Simkovich still has a policy allowing late work to be handed in with the condition that ten points will be taken off for every day late. Ms. Simkovich also teaches at a college where she’s been given more excuses. One story involved a girl who left her homework in her car. No biggie right? Oh, the car got towed! Ms. Simkovich also testified that she had a student whose homework was actually eaten by his dog.

English teacher, Mr. Hutchinson’s favorite excuse he recieved from a student was, “The battery ran out on my Kindle.”

Recently, Miss Davison, a new English teacher at CHS, had a student explain that he “got two flu shots in his right arm so he couldn’t type the essay.”

Some students don’t even have to think of their own excuses, there are hundreds of them on the internet already. Websites like Yahoo  and Wikihow filled with creative and slightly odd excuses. There’s also a number of personal blogs with students writing down their excuses. Most of them are actually quite humorous, for instance, “Kanye West ripped up my homework because he thought Beyonce’s homework was better.” Or even the arbitrary, “aliens took it as a sample of human writing.”

Another rare yet embarrassing excuse Mr. Grose was told once by a student in his English class was, “my baby brother peed on it.” Mr. Gose thanked the student for not submitting that assignment.

When it comes to excuses, here’s a word to the wise . . . think it through before you speak. Mrs. McNamara, English teacher, received an email from a student explaining that their computer wasn’t working so they couldn’t complete the assignment. Funny how the computer worked to send that email.

As to why students feel the need to create these outlandish excuses, Junior Alex Oummadi explained, “Us kids create these excuses because we have pressure to do well and between participation in extracurriculars and sports, time is scarce.”

Teachers beware: if you hear any of the ecuses on http://www.you-can-be-funny.com/Funny-Excuses-For-Not-Doing-Homework.html you are definitely being lied to about the incompletion of a homework assignment.

 

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About the Contributors
Rabeya Hussaini, Spring Reporter
Rabeya Hussaini is currently a sophomore at Colonia High School. She participates in Winter & Spring Track, as well as Poetry club, Anime club, and National Art Honor Society. Her hobbies are drawing, listening to music, reading, and writing some things of her own. In the future she hopes to attend college somewhere in-state where she can stay close to her family. For now, she does her best and keeps up with her academics.
Stephanie Polonis, Reporter & Editor
Stephanie Polonis is a senior at Colonia High School.  She loves writing in school and on her free time. Her favorite hobbies are dancing, and hanging out with her boyfriend.  Polonis’s plan when she grows up is to become a Cosmetologist.

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The days of my dog ate my homework might be over