It seems to be that time in the semester, the time when the class sizes are getting unofficially smaller due to people missing class. Students are exhausted, they are forced to skip one class in order to work on homework for another and professors are hearing excuse after excuse as to why a student is missing their class.

Professors at Grand Valley State University have heard all different kinds of excuses from students who miss class. Some excuses are unique and humorous, while others are common go-to excuses.

Shinian Wu, a linguistics professor at GVSU, recalled a time when a student claimed to be going on a vacation in the middle of the semester with his parents to Disneyland.

“Once a student asked me to excuse his upcoming absence because he was going to Disneyland with his parents in the middle of a semester,” Wu said. “I replied, ‘Just lie to me. Make up a better story to make me feel better.’”

Roger Gilles, a writing professor, said going on vacation in the middle of the semester seemed to be a common excuse among students, other than the common excuses of sickness, a death in the family, job interviews, etc. He also mentioned that he once had a student who had an excessive amount of absences due to her religious denomination.

“I guess the strangest situation I recall involved a student whose religious denomination demanded that she observe something like 10 religious holidays over the course of a semester,” Gilles said. “She was trying to take Writing 150, which has a fairly strict attendance policy. If we stuck to the attendance policy, this student would literally never be able to pass the course, which of course was required for graduation, so in the end we allowed her to miss the classes. That was an unusual situation, and I don’t think it ever happened again.”

Regis Fox, an assistant English professor, said she couldn’t think of any excuses that stuck out as unbelievable or overtly funny, but she said the most common excuses seemed to be computer problems, some sort of injury or illness, car troubles or even the infamous “I forgot” excuse.

Even though students can have some very interesting excuses as to why they are missing a class, professors are not immune to the realities of life either. Associate English professor Jo Miller said she once had an embarrassing moment due to her four-year-old’s curiosity.

“On the flip-side, I couldn’t return a batch of papers to students one time because my four-year-old was learning to use scissors and had literally shredded all the papers I had left on the dining table the night before, so that was embarrassing to have to ask the class to re-submit their papers because they were all cut up,” Miller said.

Students at GVSU use a variety of excuses—some legitimate, some maybe less so—to excuse themselves from class or homework assignments. Whether students are dealing with a sickness, a death in the family, car trouble or work, most professors seem to be pretty understanding that life can get in the way of a college class, within reason.