On a weekday at AHS, a student’s typical daily schedule calls for at least 27 hours, but a day is, and always will be, only 24 hours. Therefore, students have 24 hours to complete their 27-hour daily routine.

Here is the math. Approximately 3 ½ hours of a student’s day is taken up with homework says the LA Times. A day of school at AHS takes up 7 ½ hours. Nationwide Children, a health resource, says adolescents need 9 ½ hours of sleep a day. Morning and evening routines, like showering and brushing teeth, take about an hour and a half out of a day. Dinner takes about an hour. After school activities take about 2 hours. A student’s favorite TV show takes about an hour. The time spent online takes an hour away from the day at a minimum, and lastly, students have to spend at least a half hour telling their mothers about their days.

With this syllogism, it is assumed that somewhere within that 27-hour day, 3 hours of tasks are being erased. The deleted 3 hours of tasks vary for everyone, but AHS teachers and students have shown that some of those tasks being disregarded are often homework.

To cope with the problem of a very short day, students are forced to make excuses. Unfortunately, the dog ate my homework excuse has been exposed; AHS math teacher Bernadette Pelinski knows about it.

“I mean no one has ever given me the dog ate my homework excuse, but I know it,” Pelinski said.

So here is how AHS teachers really feel about excuses.

“I was tired is the one excuse that I just have a hard time with because, although I understand it, I had to write my own master’s thesis and I was tired and would go well into the night before I would rise and shine and teach a full day of classes and go back to the same routine again at night. So, yes, it is hard to tolerate the tired excuse,” Jenifer Morandi-Benson, AHS leadership and history teacher, said.

Josh has also heard quite a few excuses.

“I’ve heard I got home really late or when I was driving there was so much traffic,” Josh Anderson, AHS math teacher, said.

The teachers were once students, and they have been through what we are going through. Therefore, the teachers know how to detect false excuses. They know that sometimes students just can’t do homework. They prefer a student coming and talking to them, and they would be more than happy to work through it with that student.

“Your teacher is a human,” Anderson said.

Pelinski, like Anderson, also has a similar opinion…students shouldn’t feel intimidated by communicating with them.

“I would much rather have a student say that they didn’t do it and they will try to get it to me tomorrow, than making up an excuse. I love when students feel comfortable enough to talk to me,” Pelinski said.

Teachers know that sometimes their students legitimately just couldn’t do their homework. Here’s what they have to say about that:

“I think some of them might be overscheduled, and then they try to fit it all in. When they try to fit it all in, they can’t prioritize,” said Josh Berro, AHS counselor.

Morandi-Benson, also, feels that the reason students don’t complete all their homework could be because of the lack of prioritizing.

“I feel especially at AHS that students are very involved in extracurricular activities. There is a lot going on here, I have learned very quickly, with all this activity, I feel like there are a lot of excuses being used out there, but I feel that it is all about priority, and if you prioritize your academics first then there will be less of a need to use excuses. Overall, students might just be over involved,” Morandi-Benson said.

The teachers say that students probably don’t do their homework because they were overscheduled, but some AHS students admit that in truth, it’s just because they procrastinated too long.

“I’ve had one particular classmate who was always coming to class with a new excuse. One time, he used the excuse that his mother had a nervous breakdown, so she used his homework to make origami,” senior Judd Hawk said.

Madison Osberger-Low states that she believes the real reason students don’t do there homework is because they didn’t have enough time.

“Yeah, I have told a teacher I got home too late and that I couldn’t do it, but I have also heard many others use this excuse as well. We procrastinate because we have so much other stuff going on, and then we wait and wait and eventually get to a point where we just don’t have enough time,” said Osberger-Low, AHS sophomore.

Yes, teachers know how busy AHS students are, but they also know when a student is lying.

“Details determine whether a student is lying or not. If they can provide me with specific details, the more likely I am to believe them. Also, if a student informs me ahead of time and the communication is good then the student is more likely to be honest,” Morandi-Benson said.

There is no definitive reason why students don’t do their homework and then lie about it. The teachers believe that they have overscheduled themselves, and then lie because they don’t want a teacher to judge their work ethic. The students say that it’s probably because they didn’t properly prioritize their action packed lives. Even though every student doesn’t not do their homework due to their schedules, through what some AHS teachers and students have said, it can be assumed that the reason kids at AHS use excuses is because they simply didn’t have enough time. They didn’t have enough time due to their need to cram a 27-hour two do list into a 24-hour day.