Use these at your own risk next time you’re late
Illustration by Sona Eidnani.
In my last year as a student at UVic, I’ve noticed people are always showing up late to class. To be fair, most of them have pretty good excuses. “My bus was late” or “my bicycle had a flat tire” are pretty common, and believable, explanations.
However, not everyone’s excuses are so plausible. Here are three of the most ridiculous –– and totally real –– reasons I have heard for being late to class.
Engineering building collapse
One time, I had a classmate say that she was late because the Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) building expansion collapsed on top of her.
As the story goes, as she was walking to class, she stopped at the ECS building to get something from the vending machine. While she was waiting for her drink to be dispensed, she noticed some dust coming off the roof of the building. She had just grabbed her drink and stepped outside, narrowly avoiding the massive pile of rebar and post-tensioning cable falling over!
Luckily, this student made it out of the rubble without any injury, and was only a few minutes late.
Had to pay tuition
Here’s another ridiculous one I heard one time. I was in Writing 100 and was running a little bit late myself — but not by a lot, just two minutes or so. 20 minutes later, this guy came in, soaking wet.
The excuse he gave our professor? “I just spent the last half hour swimming around the Petch Fountain, diving for nickels to pay for my tuition.”
This excuse was obviously ridiculous, because we all know how expensive tuition is these days. There’s no way there were any coins left in the fountain to dive for.
Saving on parking
“I had to park my car half an hour away to save on parking.”
As far as excuses go, this is one of the more believable ones — because parking really is that expensive at UVic. As a little-known campus newspaper reported in 2022, the average person then paid about $600 — prior to a major increase — per year for general parking on campus.
Walking half an hour to a free parking space is a heck of a walk to get there and back, though. And I don’t think the most tightly-scheduled students who live off-campus would want to add that walk to their daily routines.
With these examples in mind, if you do find yourself late to class, please do the bare minimum and show up with a half-decent excuse.
