Teaching a recitation class for a General Psychology class is hard work.  It involves choosing appropriate material to cover, presenting that material accurately and grading papers. That’s the easy part.

The hard part is discerning students’ real excuses from made-up ones. I have heard stuff that you probably wouldn’t make up just to get out of class and a lot of stuff that sounds a little unlikely, if not straight out of a high school movie.

One of my fellow recitation teachers got the Contador excuse from a student; “It was the food.”
The student claimed food poisoning prevented her from making it to class – right before class time during tailgating Thursday. The excuse wasn’t entirely unlikely since food during tailgating might be cooked improperly, or cross-contamination might occur. However, alcohol poisoning is not entirely unlikely either.

To believe or not to believe, that is the question. While you can test athletes’ blood for illegal substances, you can’t ask students for stool samples. If it had been my student I would have asked for a doctor’s note, but the excuse worked for her (Contador, it seems, will not be so lucky).