DeKALB | Do you think you’re good at making up excuses? Teachers at NIU have seen them all. So, before you try to outsmart your instructor, take a look at some favorites from NIU faculty.

“I once had a student tell me a few days before a big paper was due that he did not like the assignment and he refused to complete it. This was coming from an ‘A’ student and never would I have thought he would tell me this. Because of his honesty, I let him choose his own topic, within reason, for the paper, and he completed it with ease.”

Anonymous

History instructor

“One of the more honest excuses happened many years ago when a student came up to me saying he would miss an in-class paper. He told me, ‘I can’t be in class tomorrow because it is opening day of the deer hunting season and I do it every year.’ As long as students tell me beforehand, I usually have no problem with it.”

Anonymous

Philosophy instructor

“It was my first semester at Northern and I was holding quick 10-minute conferences with each of the students. I was stacked the entire day with these conferences, so the students could not be late. It came time for a student, who also played for the NIU football team. He was eight minutes late for the conference and proceeded to tell me, ‘I’m really sorry I am late, I had to take a call from the Miami Dolphins, who are interested in drafting me.’ He was not even close to making it to the NFL.”

Matt Swan

Communication instructor

“I once taught two brothers who had taken the same class one semester apart. The first brother turned in a paper the one semester while the second brother turned in the exact same paper the next semester. When I confronted the second brother about the possible plagiarism, he told me, ‘I didn’t really plagiarize this paper. I wrote the paper for my brother last semester because I owed him money.”

John King

Sociology instructor