Part 11: The Best (Really Worst) College Student Excuses of All Time - The Food and Drink File

Overview

As an overview, this article is part of a series (Overview: The Best (Really Worst) College Student Excuses of All Time - Introduction to the Article Series), exploring what excuses college students have offered to explain an absence, a missed exam, a paper or project being late, etc. All of these excuses have been collected from this author’s contemporaries - professors and instructors at colleges and universities all across America. As such, it is a “crowdsourced” piece, and I owe them my gratitude for sharing their “best” excuses - which in reality means the “worst” - from their students over the years that provided the basis for this article series. And in all of these articles, each of which deals with a different “origin area” for student excuses, from health to tech to social to pets and more, we not only see excuses that make us laugh, but we also see some that could make you cry, as there are also stories of students who “went the extra mile” and persevered over the unique obstacles they might have faced in their lives to succeed in school (A complete list of the articles in the series with links to them is provided at the end of this article.)

In this article in the series exploring college student excuses, we look at how issues with foods of all types and beverages come into play in causing students to miss a class, a test, or a paper/project submission deadline. So, without further ado, let’s open the food and drink file and explore how some of life’s greatest pleasures can cause college students to have “issues.”

Food and Drink Issues

To begin with, all of us on faculty today likely have memories of how food and drink issues came into play in our own college experience, including some involving our own professors, such as this one submitted anonymously by a colleague:

“Can we count excuses for former professors? I had an undergrad professor show up late to class (as usual) and tell us that he was sorry he was late. He would have been on time except he knew we expected him to be late, so he stopped to eat a bagel. I will say that although the lateness was frustrating, he was still overall a great prof.”

When it comes to being late for class or for a test because of food and drink issues today, Starbucks seems to be the leading cause of student tardiness today! This is evidenced by the following comment from a fellow faculty member:

“A student walks in late with a Starbucks cup. ‘The line was soooo long!’” To which a fellow professor responded: “Ugh! I had a student do this Every. Single. Day. Normally, I do everything to ensure a student doesn’t fail, but I loved giving her the F she totally deserved!”

Now some students, likely with a high degree of emotional intelligence, thought that buying their professor a cup of coffee would be the way to get their lateness/absence excused - and they were right in these instances!:

“I once got an email from Starbucks: ‘What would you like to drink?’ How much can you complain when the late students bring you a treat along the way?”

“I had a student bring me a drink to soften the blow of being late. No regrets.”

The food and drink-related excuses submitted by my contemporaries from all over the country were, to say the least, interesting:

“Student (who always wanted extra credit) packed up and got up to leave 40 min into the class. What’s up? I asked. “It’s free pancake day at IHOP.”

“I had a student who said he was late to class because he was eating a waffle.”

“I ate too much Halloween candy.”

“Student emailed me that ‘he couldn’t come to class because of allergic reaction to pumpkin beer.’”

Gastrointestinal Issues from Eating the Wrong Thing

Students will always use stomach issues as a “go to” excuse - and detail the food that caused it (and many will provide way too much information on what caused them to get sick!):

“In grad school, my first professor specifically told students not to eat convenience stores hot dogs on exam day. Grad school, public health... Students should have figured this out on their own.”

“Student missed an in-person exam due to eating a bad burrito. Unfortunately, they provided GRAPHIC detail about the digestive consequences of said burrito.”

“One semester, a recurring excuse was a digestive malady that students believed to be brought on by a dining hall called ‘Observatory Hill’ or ‘O'Hill’ for short. Try to guess the students' name for the malady. Yep, ‘O'Bola.’ (There was a complete scrubdown of the facility and it was eventually determined that norovirus was the culprit... *not* people in the dining hall putting soap in the food!).”

“My Japanese students have been known to tell me they were suffering from ‘sushi bowels.’"

But when you try to play the “gastro card,” students would be well-advised to get their story - and their technology - in line:

“Student emailed me ‘I will miss class due to food poisoning.’ Then, a second email came from with a photo of her using a beer bong labeled ‘check out last night, Carmen.’ Then a third email came, frantically telling me not to open the second because she sent it to a friend with the same first name. I sent back an email stating only ‘unexcused absence’ (although I did think for a min that this really is a sort of food poisoning).”

Conclusion

Unlike most of the other articles in this series, this one doesn’t conclude with a story of students persevering or overcoming adversity when it comes to food and drink issues. Hopefully though, all of these students - and students in the future - will have learned from these experiences (and maybe even have a great story to tell about them someday!).

The Article Series

If you enjoyed reading this article on the best excuses offered by college students regarding legal issues, please check out the other articles in the series exploring a whole host of other “causations” of absences, missed tests, late projects, etc. It’s all offered in a good spirit, and I hope you will check them out for yourself and perhaps share with your colleagues - and maybe even your students!

The Book

Enjoy this article - or these articles? Please buy Professor Wyld's ebook - The Handbook of College Student Excuses - that compiles all of these excuses in one place - for yourself, for a college student you know (or parent), or for a college faculty member. It is a great, fun read, and makes a great gift! Get it today from Smashwords (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1073655) or on Amazon (https://amzn.to/3rM5IXZ). You can also view the college student "Excuse of the Day" on Dr. Wyld's blog at http://www.collegestudentexcuses.com/the-best-excuse-of-the-day/.

About David Wyld

David Wyld is a Professor of Strategic Management at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. He is a management consultant, researcher/writer, publisher, executive educator, and experienced expert witness.

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