And the Award for Best Performance in Front of a Skeptical Faculty Member Goes to ...

The theatrics started 48 hours before the official withdrawal deadline. Tiffany, the first actress, hadn't bothered to read the policy in the syllabus, which states that students have a one-week grace period before I start penalizing late work. Her assignment was only two days late, not a matter of concern to me. Tiffany, however, was sure that she would earn a zero, so she began the performance by telling me that her best friend, after hanging on in the hospital for two days, had died that morning, the victim of a horrible automobile accident.

Now the local news here in Central Florida loves deadly car crashes, especially when a twenty something is fighting for life, giving the reporters time to analyze the accident and assign blame. If the young woman was at fault because of booze, pills, or the inability to pilot the huge SUV her parents bought for her birthday, we would have seen cops declaring the senselessness of the death. If she was the victim of someone else's drunkenness or inattention, the reporters would have broadcast family members crying for justice or weeping friends dropping off teddy bears at the roadside memorial. As a local news junkie, I had heard nothing of such an accident. The late piece that Tiffany delivered was polished, not the type of incoherent writing I would expect from someone who had just observed her best friend's death. The laser jet printing hadn't run from dripped tears.

Julio, the second actor, dashed to my office three minutes after I sent him an email warning of unsatisfactory progress. He must have been sitting at a computer on campus, updating his MySpace account or playing internet poker, not producing work he owed me, as he arrived empty handed. Although he had been an impressive student as we satisfied the literature component of the class, he was falling apart during the big research project. He was missing many assignments on top of being absent in class for the last week. Julio's performance in my office included a long monologue about Grandma. She hadn't died, but his family had learned that she was in a hospital in Columbia, about to expire from a heart attack. So the entire family had driven to Miami to catch the first flight to their home country. Before boarding the airplane, they learned that Grandma just had a bad bout of gas, nothing a Bean-O couldn't solve. Miami is three hours away by car, so how all of this drama had consumed an entire week he didn't explain. I was unable to sustain my disbelief during the performance.

Shortly after, Gerald, another nominee for best lie told to explain late work, appeared in my doorway, his open laptop in hand. "Professor Lightbulb," he panted, having run from somewhere, "how much do you know about computers?" Well, young man, quite a bit. Haven't you seen me demonstrate a range of multimedia presentations, all of which you know I created and then post to the course blog for your out-of-class download pleasure? Haven't you watched me fix problems after the AV guys throw up their hands in defeat? So I guess that you can surmise that I know quite a bit about computers.

"What's the problem?" I asked.

"I have the work I owe you—I mean, I wrote it—and I saved it, but it's not anywhere on my computer!"

He offered me the laptop as if the computer alone could fill the zeros in my grade book. When I opened Word, there were no recent documents opened or saved. The computer was either brand new or not used for writing papers. Gerald continued to pant while I ran a quick search. The heavy breathing added to my annoyance, not my sympathy. "There's nothing here," I said.

"But I saved it!" he emphasized. Despite the histrionics, I found the performance unconvincing.

My best actress—utilizing all of her high school drama club training—gave her elaborate performance in class with an audience of peers. She too owed me a number of assignments; her excuse was that a recent illness had put her way behind in all of her classes. She sat in class and fake sniffled and coughed. All the while, she crumpled tissues which formed a ring around her computer keyboard. Everyone in the room knew that she wasn't really sick because she couldn't get enough juiciness going to be truly convincing. But she would win an award for set decoration, for I found the ring of crumpled tissues an effective visual for her snow job.

This semester had been going so well that I wasn't counting down the days to Thanksgiving as I usually do at this time of year. I was enjoying my students and happy with their progress. I wasn't expecting scintillating research from them, but I did believe that they would continue to crank out the competent efforts that I had grown accustomed to.

But when students start putting their energy into lame performances instead of completing their work, they start to disappoint me. I wish that they would try honesty for a change: "Professor Lightbulb, I am a lazy slacker [or desperately trying to catch up in calculus, or working on a big group project in US Government, or whatever] and I have fallen behind. I promise that I'll have the work I owe you by _____." I would love some refreshing truth. I might even use the line my undergrad professors often used on me: "Oh, that's okay. Your writing is worth waiting for!"