No Excuses!

Frequent readers of “Be-Worded” know that I have a particular fascination with prefixes, which is why I added “be-“ (surrounded by) to the titles of my two blogs, “Be-Worded” and “Be-Lied.” I like to look for unusual root words with prefixes attached and frequently I find them (for example, inclement, befuddled, overflection, dementor, and benumbed). For this blog entry, the word “excuse” inspired me to wonder if “cuse” is a word with the “ex-” prefix negating whatever it might mean. (Perhaps “excuse” and “Syracuse” might be related? Might and “excuse” be an alum of “Syracuse”?)

Much to my disappointment, my “American Heritage College Dictionary” informed me that “cuse” is not a root word—at least not in English. “Excuse,” meaning “to explain (a fault or offense) in hope of being forgiven or understood,” comes from Latin, where the root causa, meaning “accusation,” “reason,” or “purpose,” is attached to the prefix “ex-.” 

This investigation serves to introduce the following essay which I wrote in the mid-1990’s (hence the anachronism of cassette tapes). Hopefully, it needs no excuse!

"My Dog Ate Your Homework":  When Teachers Must Give Excuses

Anyone who has taught has surely accumulated a list of students' excuses for missing or late work.  While the old faithfuls of hungry dogs and dead grandmothers still hang in there, modern technology has provided fresh fodder, ranging from lost or corrupted files to computers which mysteriously gobble work, like the hungry dogs of yesteryear.  I once had a student who, upon running out of her own dead grandmothers, borrowed dead grandmothers freely from her roommate, her boyfriend, and anyone else who volunteered to share.

While we as teachers chuckle, roll our eyes, or become impatient with these student excuses, what happens when we are caught in situations where we must provide students with excuses for tardiness in grading, mutilated papers, or--horror of horror--lost sets of work?

In undergraduate school, I had a teacher reknowned for tardiness in grading.  We came to accept that habit and to forgive it because her excuses entertained us.  After one test, she informed us that she had left the window down in her car and it rained on our tests.  She was delayed in grading them by the necessity of drying them in her oven.  What a half-baked excuse!  Another time, she claimed that she dropped our papers in the mud.  I don't remember how she remedied that circumstance, but I never remember getting back papers that seemed any worse for the wear.

I used to pride myself in never having lost a paper, much less a set of papers.  Occasionally, I misplaced a paper, but I always found it.  However, that record was broken with a vengeance when I lost a set of papers on the highway.  One morning, I set out on my motorcycle for an appointment.  Carefully, I bungeed a file folder holding a set of freshman essays on the back, expecting to have time to peruse them in the waiting room.  Much to my horror, when I arrived at the doctor's office, neither folder nor bungee cords were still attached to my motorcycle.  On the way home, I carefully scouted for the papers but found no evidence of them.  How was I going to explain this dilemma to my freshmen?

Fortunately for me, a motorist noticed the scattered pages and collected as many of them as she could find.  She retrieved most of the set and left a message for me at the college. (I require that the students write my name as well as their own on their essays.) However, I still faced explaining the situation, as some students were missing pages from their essays, and the essays were a little worse for the wear.  After I returned the set and explained truthfully the situation--a roving motorcycle gang forced me off the highway, snatched the essays, and scattered them about, or was it aliens who took them for perusal?--one student proudly displayed his trophy.  One page of his essay had a highly visible tire print across it.  That essay was one that he would save.

My most humorous brush with giving excuses actually involved my dog, a basset puppy, chewing a student's homework.  I gave the students the option of writing an out-of-class essay analyzing a song.  I asked that if they chose that option, that they submit a cassette tape of the song with the essay.  One morning, I was in another room when I heard an ominous crunching.  Negligently, I had left my briefcase on the floor and my puppy had extracted a tape and begun munching.

Fortunately, I retrieved the tape before too much damage was done.  Ironically, the student had chosen to analyze a song about the singer's best friend, his pet dog.  I was able to listen to the song and grade the paper, but felt quite sheepish having to explain to the student that my dog ate his homework.  The student was a good-natured fellow as it was.  Nonetheless, he was pleased to be able to trumpet about that the teacher's dog ate his homework.