HowTo:Skip School

HowTo This article is part of Uncyclopedia's HowTo series. See more HowTos

The actors from Grease skipped school at Fagi Hayr High to go to this photo shoot for a Gay/Straight Alliance advertisement.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

~ Ferris Bueller on Philosophy

Didn't study for the big algebra test? "Lost" your homework? Poverty got you down? Pieces of evidence surrounding the "extra-curricular activities" scandal with your teacher slowly coming into the eye of justice? Never fear! Skipping school is here to save the day!

Now, you may ask, what is this alleged, so-called "skipping of school?" How does it affect me, and more importantly, my tax dollars? How do I, a simple everyman with naught but the clothes on my back and some lint in my pocket, "skip" a "school"? Hey, hey, slow down there, sonny boy! We'll get to that! Just sit back, relax, and try not to do anything stupid.

So you're going to commit truancy: the basics of skipping school

For whatever the reason, you've decided to skip school. Congratulations! That was more or less the hardest part. Now that you have this goal in mind, you must not back down. If you back down now, you will be readily mocked by your peers and made a pariah. You will be a wimp. Oh, and that nervous tingle in your stomach is called Peer Pressure. Don't worry! Not only is the feeling temporary, but will help you make some of the best decisions in your life! With time, you will learn to use peer pressure to your advantage as a scapegoat. But until such a time comes, just follow the tingle through the path of Truancy.

But what is Truancy? Webster's defines Truancy as "an act or instance of playing truant; the state of being truant". It defines Truant as "What you are when you are committing truancy"... But seriously, what is truancy? Basically, it is the act of skipping school in a country where compulsory schooling is the law. It was invented in the 1700s by three rambunctious schoolyard chums who, rather than walk uphill both ways in a blizzard to get to school at 5:00 in the morning, decided to hang out all day at the pub. A wise decision, in retrospect; a day in which three 17-year-old farm boys would otherwise be learning rudimentary math skills turned into a legacy that would begin and end in their local school flogging room. Still, the idea caught on, especially after the banning of most forms of corporal punishment in United States schools (except for Massachusetts).

Excuses

At this time it is worth noting that, in many countries such as the U.S. and U.K., truancy is illegal. However, this bullet can be dodged easily by making up excuses.

The Classic: "I'm sick"

Feigning sickness is not only a primary warning sign of Hypochondria, but also a relatively easy excuse for getting out of school. Most non-military schools will allow sickness and/or injuries as a valid excuse for skipping school. There are two ways to use sickness as an absence excuse: faking a disease, and intentionally catching one. For the sake of completeness, we'll cover both aspects of what has been called the "classic" excuse.

First, we'll go over faking it. Widely acknowledged to be the easier and often less painful side of this excuse, faking it can be accomplished in many ways with a variety of methods. However, all one must really keep in mind are these things:

1. Choose a disease to be "infected" with beforehand. Do your research. If you pretend to display common symptoms of a common cold, such as sniveling, coughing, and sneezing, it will seem more like you have a cold. If you shiver, make yourself vomit and go into fake convulsions, it will seem like a realistic case of Malaria. Be creative!
2. If possible, act sick the night previous to your absent day. This not only makes your alleged health problem seem more "legit", but also you may get the added bonus of being treated with high-inducing prescription/cough medicine.
3. Control your coughing. This can never be stressed enough. Coughing too little may make you seem healthy enough to endure seven hours of non-stop schoolwork, but coughing too much may lead to the discovery that you're faking it. Take an acting class if necessary, preferably one on the finer points of fake coughing.
4. While there are several ways of being "found out" that you're faking, few are more foolproof than being taken to a doctor. Avoid this at all costs. Supposing the doctor is both competent and not easily susceptible to bribes, you will be discovered, and likely have your ass whooped by your father later.

How to intentionally catch diseases can be summed up in two words: Lick things. And remember, if you have trouble getting sick with the licking method, remember: if your tongue doesn't feel like sandpaper, and doesn't turn your finger brown to the touch, you aren't licking enough things.

For females only. Refer to your school nurse if you are unsure whatever gender you are. But that will involve going to school. Pretend to have menstrual cramps. (Its one of the rare "sickness" normal people won't find out) In the morning, lie on your bed all limp and bent. Act weak while in agony. If your acting is superb, cry a little but pretend to be enduring the pain. Show that the pain is so acute that it prevents you from preparing for school, much less even attend school. Get your mum to write a note to the school stating the cause of your absence. You can even ask her to include a subscript saying that you don't want to be embarrassed by your classmates knowing the reason and ask your teacher not to disclose it. This could even prevent your teacher from asking awkward questions.

What to do for the rest of the day? First lie in. go back to sleep so you won't have to fake the agony which can become real agony from faking too much. Wait till its too late to go to school, then announce that the pain is gone and you are feeling "much better". This will suffice as a reason for you to resume your leisure activities for the rest of the day. Good Luck!

The Dead Relative

Ol' gramps here looks just about ready to bump off. 3 day weekend!

The dead relative is harder and riskier to pull off than the sick excuse, but can also be more rewarding. The premise, if nothing else, is simple enough; fake that you must attend the funeral of a late relative. As with the sick excuse, faking it is the primary and easy method, but in this case it's better not to hire an assassin to kill your old auntie Barbara, as this may lead to a longer break from school than is desired. Faking it can become quite elaborate, and entire stunt crews, special effects teams, and Steven Spielbergs can be hired to publicly fake a death - in style.

Be wary when using this, though, as many a bored school secretary has researched whether or not your Old uncle Chad really died of Herpes, or even existed. To avoid this, try to use an existing relative rather than making one up, but make sure that either that relative is already dead or one of your incredibly obscure anarcho-primitivist second cousins thrice removed, who lives in a jungle and survives off of the rare bumbleberry fruit.

That, or with a little patience you could simply wait for one to die, so long as your little "day off" isn't incredibly urgent. In fact, statistics show that at least 99.9% of all people born will eventually die. With such a high death rate, I'm sure any number of your various aunts, uncles, or otherwise are ready to give out at any time, without warning.

The Note

For all you forgers out there, we've got a challenge for you! Notes are an awesome power, dealing nothing less than absolute pardoning of all absent days. The note is not only a great way to get out of school, but also, on a smaller scale, to get out of P.E. Assuming you go to private school, you probably already know cursive for the signatures, and, supposing you went to public school, well... you can write at least, right? Well...can you read? No? Then how the hell are you reading this? Is your friend reading this for you? Well, then, get him to do everything for you. Seriously, why are you even freeloading off him in the first place? No, wait, don't answer that.

The first thing needed is a sample of your Parent/Guardian's signature. To get ahold of a copy of their signature, just ask them to sign a fake field trip permission paper, or steal a check. As a sample, we'll assume that their signature looks a little something like this:

The next step is to make a rough draft. It may look a little like this, depending on your calligraphy skills:

You're off to a good start. However, practice makes perfect, so keep writing it over and over. You can't practice too much! After practicing for a mere couple of hours, we can assume that your false signature must look at least this good by now:

In other words, so fancy and illegible that those hoity-toity snooties at the attendance office couldn't dare but to accept it. Next comes the harder part: making up an excuse. Vacation, disease (see above), surgery, dentist/orthodontist/doctor appointment, funeral (see above, but not quite as far above as you did before), injury, or any combination of the above are what most schools accept as legitimate excuses. Don't use the vacation excuse because, besides that being virtually the truth, it's more fun to lie and feel sneaky. With that exception, I heartily recommend you use all of the excuses at the same time. Your note should read much like this:

While the excuse itself is rather outlandish, the signature at the end certifies it. Such is the wonderment of forgery.

Snow Day

A clan of snowmen enjoying their fleeting lives during a typical snow day.

Works best in Northern States and during Winter, preferably both at once. The Snow Day is a rare occurrence during which, somehow, in a way usually directly related to colder/snowier weather, safe transportation to school becomes highly impossible. Snow Days are beloved by children and deemed to be, officially, the most fun and most pranciful excuse for skipping school. The Snow Day formula is as follows:

${\frac {W(|T|)}{547S+D}}$

Or, the amount of water vapor (W) in an integrated column of air directly above the school times the absolute value of the temperature (T) divided by the sum of 547 times S (a value representing summer, 1 if it is summer and 0 if not) plus the number of previous consecutive snow days that year (D). The higher the number, the more likely that a snow day will happen. Study it well.

However, in this case math is not always the answer. For absolute confirmation of a snow day during which school is skipped, watch the local news in the morning or listen to the radio on a day during which even a minuscule amount of snow falls. The anchor should announce if and which schools are closed. If they fail to mention anything, call your school. They will know. If you are going to school, accept this news in a depressed manner, as the secretary may have sympathy and change her mind. Otherwise, laugh in her face, shout some profanities, and abruptly hang up.

Global warming has recently been blamed for decreasing the number of snow days per year. Therefore, you have about ten years left to exploit this method. If you would like to keep having snow days into the indefinite future, stay in school, study hard, invent a time machine, go back to 2000 and vote for Al Gore using a fake ID.

Hurricane Day

See? Friendly, and perfectly domesticated. We advise that you flee.

The Hurricane Day method of skipping school is a little more complicated and often results in a week long break. The first thing you must do is procure a hurricane. Like the Snow Day, only with God on your side will one happen. When God decides to rain unholy vengeance upon your city then that means that there is no school. Contrary to popular belief you actually don't need to leave a city during a hurricane. Most hurricanes are docile and like to lick you in the face and retrieve tennis balls. However there are certain hurricanes like the Miami Hurricanes who can destroy the average man with a single bound.

The docile breed of hurricane can easily be weathered by staying in your home and watching TV or anything else that could possibly be considered time-wasting. They are actually quite relaxing and certain hurricanes used to be used as aphrodisiacs. However the volatile hurricanes can HIT YOUR WEAKPOINT FOR 8+4d12 DAMAGE!!!!(X3 if you crit!) These hurricanes can cause school skipping for months at a time. You may be forced to enroll at a different school, however, your new school will probably lower its standards to help you and your lead paint chip-eating friends get good grades, thereby keeping the federal funds rolling in. Either way it's going to be a cakewalk.

Once you get back to your school, life will continue on as normal no matter what kind of hurricane you went through, unless your school was completely demolished during the hurricane; in which case you will be forced to sit in the pile of wood that used to be your school, learning probably about as much as you did before, despite the fact that the chalkboard is now in over a hundred pieces, scattered across three Gulf Coast states.

The Octopus Method

Obtaining octopodes: not as easy as it sounds.

Often lauded as the best yet least used method, The Octopus Method is regarded as the most effective method by far, easily trumping The Note. The process can be summarized by two easy-to-memorize notes:

1. Obtain an octopus of any variety.
2. Repeat Step 1 until desired result has been achieved.

Trust us, eventually you will reach such a high number of your cephalopod buddies that those stiffs at the school will just have to let you out from school! This option never fails, though good luck finding enough Octopi without using the extremely pricey Japanese Sea food Black market.

What to do

Now that you officially are school-free for the day, what to do? First, pay off someone to do your homework. Many a fool has gone for all of seven hours work-free, only to have to make up for all of it plus homework at 3:00 PM, effectively wasting half of the day.

Once you have secured your homework-doer-forer-youer, it's time to PARTAAAAY! ... Or so you would think, except that no one else is out from school today. Tragic, is it not?

Yes, such is the realization of many a school skipper. There is little to do. Even TV turns into "Daytime television", with such monumental horrors as Oprah and *shudder* Soap Operas.

Finally, you will reluctantly come to the depressing realization that you did nothing all day. When you go to school the next day, odds are your heart just won't be in it. From then on out you'll be a loose cannon with nothing left to live for, experimenting with drugs, alcohol, and sex.

On the bright side, if you're antisocial, you don't have to put up with those meddling classmates of yours; you probably wait for the bell just to get away from them and get some space. If you followed the steps above, you might have saved years of your life, especially on assembly days. As for what you can do at home, you have Internet, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this HowTo. Have fun looking up pr0n for the rest of your life.

Oh! And it is best to wait until mom has gone to work -->SO<-- If u do this often make sure to have a game or something to play

See Also

• Cheat
• Exam
• Custom Degrees

Featured Article  (read another featured article)	Featured version: 30 September 2006
This article has been featured on the main page. — You can vote for or nominate your favourite articles at Uncyclopedia:VFH.

Template:FA/30 September 2006