> As more people go to college, their families find that, for safety reasons, it is wise to increase the number of grandmothers per family. Since there is currently no biological way of doing so (though another grant proposal in preparation will ask for funds to look into the prospect of cloning grandmothers, using modern genetic engineering techniques), the families must resort to in creasing the pool by divorce and remarriage.
Although it seems to be stored on Dongwon Lee user dir, he states this document was written by "Mike Adams". I couldn't find this Mike Adams and I find it a little disturbing to read a Study that has no references, no date and the Author doesn't bother about writing his own name in it.
More serious note: I have a hard time believing this from my anectodal evidence - my grandmothers were a couple of loving but otherwise spaced-out individuals who were only vaguely aware that I was in school for something at any point. The timing of my exams was not within their remotest knowledge.
Perhaps there are recent advances in sexual reproduction leading to greater allele recombination at a time of crisis for our species.
A lot of teachers have become jaded and will assume every student who brings this up is a liar and a cheat.
The problem though is that although the majority of the cases are made up to get out of exams or assignments, a small number aren't. These students, in addition to losing their beloved relative then can become very distraught to find themselves unexpectedly saddled with a false accusation of being a liar.
Because of this, when I taught, I would nod and sympathize, then say that because there had been some abuse of this in the past, they could have an extension or such only if they provided an actual published obituary from a newspaper or funeral home. Some other teachers use another method, of having a certain number of exams or assignments that can be dropped without penalty. Of course what often happens in those cases is students drop an early exam, and then later claim injustice at not getting an extra one for the deceased grandparent.
I was in mourning after losing a relative and refused to participate in an overtly cheerful activity.Not only was I reprimanded for it, but later heard the professor felt the need to complain to other people as well about yet another kid 'whos grandma had died'. It just so happened that my grandma had not died, nor would have I cared much if she would've had, but a much more cared for relative.
Thankfully it was quite a lot of years ago.
I suppose it's possible students care about their grandmothers more than their grandfathers.
With increasing age it is also more likely that you've already had your grandparents die.
Agreed though that this is a great representation of using educated subjectivity to draw reasonable conclusions from data. That's the one thing that a science degree should be teaching over all other aspects. Remembering equations, careful experimental technique, etc. all pale in to significance compared with critical analysis skills.
The thing is that she passed away in India. My grandmother would spend summers in Canada and winters in India. She passed away the same week a cousin married.
My hypothesis is that stressful things happen at the end of seasonal quarters. Final exams just happen to be one of those things. Flu season also happens to be December/January. Allergy season is around May/June.
I did a quick Google search but I can't find any information regarding death rate and monthly distribution. I would assume that it is evenly distributed but I wouldn't be surprised if the assumption was incorrect.
In case it is true, let me second kenthorvath's comment: students have much less incentive to tell a professor about deaths in their family when there's no exam coming up. (I can't judge the grandmother/grandfather ratio information, because the article presents absolutely no data on that point at all. Hence even more skepticism.)
The theory was that if the story was legit, it would be a nice gesture by the course staff. If it wasn't, the student would have some 'splainin' to do at home.
Four students, all roommates, thought about skipping an exam since they haven't prepared well. They arrived really late for the exam, and gave the excuse that they had a flat tire on the way. The Professor agrees for a re-exam.
After a week, they come really well prepared. But, the question paper was a shocker.
"Which tire got punctured?"
edit: Appears to be from 1990.
Apparently this is only a humor piece, but many of the comments seams to take this seriously.
ninja edit: this was years ago, to clarify
[1] Figure 2, http://cnx.org/content/m42935/latest/?collection=col11407/la...
Many people, especially poor folks, don't do obituaries, because they can be expensive. Original death certificates are always in high demand, and people tend to not realize that they need dozens of them -- proving to a teacher that grandma died is low priority. There are other cultural factors as well. Some religions call for immediate burial, so publication of the obituary will likely lag the student's absence.
Another factor to consider is that fall exam times line up with the holiday season, which also happens to be a time of the year when death rates spike.
Given all of the other accommodations that colleges give students, I don't see the big deal here. When I was in school, I was able to get incompletes to finish coursework or take exams late for various reasons. I had friends who got ADD diagnoses from doc-in-the-box places because they found taking exams in lecture centers with tiny desks impossible to deal with. If a C student gets an extra 3 days to study, the outcome is likely the same as it would have been.