Best Late Essay Excuse Ever

“I was so drunk on Sunday night, because my girlfriend’s father was suddenly in town and he made me go drinking with him, and we drank soooo much, so I know my essay is one day late, and I’m sorry. I was hung-over.”

That’s the more amusing spoken version of what was scrawled on an envelope bearing one essay that had been slipped under my door sometime early on Tuesday morning.

I don’t even know whether it’s true, but it amused me enough to let the lateness slide. I mean, imagine being forced by your girlfriend’s father to drink until hammered. I’m willing to take pity on anyone who might have experienced that, believe me…

5 thoughts on “Best Late Essay Excuse Ever

  1. Did you know that the Korean author Hyeon Jingeon wrote a short story called “A Society That Forces One to Drink” (술 권하는 사회)? It was published in 1921, so obviously it had a lot to do with the Japanese colonial period, but it is telling that evn back then people were drinking themselves into stupors for no good reason.

    The idea of being forced to drink by your girlfriend’s father is more tragic than comic to me.

  2. No, but I will look through _Sources of Korean Tradition_ in the hope that a translation of the text is available. It doesn’t surprise me that this way of drinking isn’t new, given all the old-fashioned decorum and rules involved.

    It does strike me that being a colonial subject of Japan might count as a good reason to drink oneself into a stupor, occasionally anyway.

    As for tragedy, I guess you’re right, it’s sad too, but it made me laugh that this was the reason the student told me. Isn’t it a bit like going to your teacher and saying, “I found a lump on my testicle, I need to go get tested” or something? I mean, I’d be telling it with less detail if I were the student: “I need to go to the doctor,” or “I had to meet with my girlfriend’s father unexpectedly this weekend, and didn’t have time to finish the essay… sorry.”

    Besides, he was grinning this big grin as he told me, so he didn’t seem to feel like he’d suffered. It’d be different if he’d complained.

    I am, however, relieved that I won’t have to go through that. Lime’s folks aren’t big drinkers, and even if they were, I have a very good medical reason to refuse.

  3. I once had a student in my Intro Logic class at Western Michigan fail to make it to a test because they were arrested. They told me that and asked if they could make it up, and I said, sure. Thinking that maybe they’d been arrested at an anti-war protest or something (there was a lot of that going around at the time), I idly asked them what for. Turns out was for something….a bit less admirable than that….but I figured it’d be hypocritical at that point to re-think giving him the makeup test.

  4. While teaching adult school as an undergrad, I had a student come to my office, and before saying a word, he plunked a bottle of medication on my desk. He then proceeded to tell me that he was bi-polar and had an episode. (I sympathized because I’m also bi-polar.) This student attended the first two weeks of classes but he’d been absent for three weeks after that. I had to do quarter reports for the first 5 weeks; he had a lot of work to make up. I told him as much and he expected me to just let him slide. I thought a week would be enough time for him to catch up on reading and take the quizzes but he decided to drop the class.

    That’s my experience but I still say yours and Ben’s are the best I’ve heard.

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