No Use for Excuses, Do the Work!

More often than not, I use past experiences to come up with material for this blog. I've been out of school for nearly a decade, but will be returning this upcoming semester to complete a degree in anthropology. If you're asking yourself, what you can do with an anthropology degree, you need to be reading the blog that I dedicate to everything anthropology. And to take this line of thought a little further, it was a discussion with a girlfriend of mine who happens to be an Anthropology professor at a University in Newfoundland that spawned the idea for this particular post.

Professor Bell was putting the final touches on a final exam for her students at home one evening, and when the clock struck ten, almost simultaneously and in a machine gun-like manner, her inbox began  filling up with emails from students who were subsequently taking the test the following morning. Bell sighed, exasperated before she had opened a single email, already anticipating the onslaught of nonsensical questions, but what she got instead, was a series of excuses as to why different students were unprepared for the impending exam.

The list of excuses, though comical, actually made me shake my head in utter disappointment. These students were my age. They were grown adults that were part of my generational cohort, and for the most part, were raised in family environments that were not radically dissimilar to my own. Yet the divide between my study ethic and preparedness, and this group of students is so wide, it's difficult to comprehend! Several of the students complained that they were unprepared because of a final paper that they had to submit at the end of the semester, yet they were assigned the paper three months earlier. Some complained that their work schedules were interfering with their studies, yet they knew that when they signed up for their courses months ago. And some complained of any number of medical issues that might prevent them from an exam, and for those particular excuses, sometimes there is actually some merit to them, but c'mon, people, if I can write an Economics final with a migraine and the flu, you can absolutely do it.

When you step out into the real world, there is little room for error, and most employers have no time to listen to you run the gamut of excuses, so why on earth would you think it's acceptable to pull that sort of nonsense in an adult classroom? It's time to pull your socks up, get your act together, and lose the excuses!