What makes a good excuse?
cam.ac.uk
cam.ac.uk
When I was deep diving into rhetoric (for a course), I needed a good excuse for an appointment at my thesis project. My thesis supervisor was being very unfair and not respecting my time at all by being non-negotiable and simply demanding when I would be there and when. The things I did were not related to my thesis and it felt very disrespectful (especially when I contrasted it with my computer science thesis). It made me feel like an unpaid temp worker, because I simply was one (that has never happened before or after and I have done 5 theses in total). At one point I really needed to get out under an obligation.
I used 2 principles:
- the one in the article and
- hide your lie in as much truth as possible
She was a psychology thesis supervisor and not all that knowledgeable about computers.
I told her my computer completely bricked itself and that I needed my code on there (I didn't back it up) because there was an assignment tonight that would simply be the difference of studying for one extra year or graduating that summer. She knew I was doing multiple study programs, a fact that I communicated well in advance. It would take at least 24 hours to get my data back based on past experience.
She was really pissed, but because she couldn't blame it on me but on my computer she didn't make me go there. She did ask me to come another day which was fine by me, since it was at a moment when I had a lot less going on. She never held it against me.
1. I don't think she'd think about backups and I didn't mention them.
2. I simply wouldn't have come and was prepared to drop the thesis and simply redo it next year. In retrospect, it's the only thesis that didn't teach me much (other than how to cope with a very unfortunate situation) and was very unfulfilling. I'm a bit ashamed I went through with it.
Is it more official now as Cambridge said it? How is this helpful in any way towards the common good?