Why College Students Fail

While there are some college students who lie to get an extension on a paper or to be able to turn it in without ramification, it is important to note that the excuses are sometimes not a lie. In the essay "The Dog Ate My Flash Drive, and Other Tales of Woe" by Carolyn Foster Segal, the author explains that she doesn't allow late work and that many excuses are lies and often ridiculous ones at that. However, the examples the author gives in the essay seem to fail to support this argument because there is no proof of the excuses being untrue, sometimes things happen that interfere with school work, and most students take their education seriously so they wouldn't lie.

In the article, the author starts by telling us about a funny cartoon on

They also have to juggle work, family, friends, healthy living, research, and social events. While no one will argue that any of those are more important than college it is easy to see how they might conflict with each other at times. Many of the example excuses given in the essay actually do happen and are an unavoidable fact of life. For example, family members do die. Often times it isn't a sudden death and can be a huge impact on an entire week or even a month. In these sorts of situations, it is only reasonable to expect a professor to be flexible with the student with their course work. The author also gives no examples of proof that the excuses were pure deception. Adding to the previous example of a death in the family, the student could have provided an obituary that proved they were truly not lying. It would be easy for the author to ask another family member if there had truly been a death or if the student was lying, but the author doesn't provide any such examples. Without proof one way or the other, it would be safer to side with the student in times of trouble than risk making a tough situation tougher for someone whose relative recently died. While some excuses might be more trivial and thus carry less weight, they do happen and it's understandable for it to have an impact on