Sooner or later, it happens to all of us. You wake up around noon, still mildly drunk from the night before, with a raging hangover that no amount of red Gatorade seems to help. You're lying in bed, and you find one pink sock hidden in the sheets (where'd that girl go, anyway? And what was her name? How did she leave without noticing she was missing a sock?). As you start going over the events of the previous night, it hits you---today is Thursday. The Thursday of the Big Exam. The exam that you were supposed to take two hours ago. Shit.

Well, fear not, my friends. As a former college boozehound, I'm here to help. Here are three excuses that are guaranteed to go over well when you miss an exam, turn in a paper late, skip work or bail on a date with a fat chick:

1.) Pink Eye. The key to any good excuse is to make it so outrageous, there's no way you could be lying. Everyone's called in sick with the flu before, but how many people have called in sick with a nasty case of Pink Eye? Not many. Benefits include:

• It's really contagious. Like, really, really contagious. So contagious, in fact, that nobody in their right mind would ever come close to sharing a room with you. You didn't just miss a big exam, you were doing your civic duty by preventing the conjuctivitis from spreading. How could anyone hate on that?
• It only lasts for three days. This buys you three extra days of study time, but isn't enough time to ruin your semester.
• While pink eye can only be cured through prescribed eye drops, you can get around having to deliver a doctor's note. Just say that you had it a few months ago, and you still had some of the eye drops left from your last diagnosis.

The beautiful thing about pink eye is that anyone can get it, though it typically affects kids. If asked, you can always blame it on your little brother or the kid you mentor a few times a week. If you take the mentoring angle, it helps to establish you as a model citizen. What kind of volunteer would lie about having pink eye?

2.) Your house burned down. This is a killer excuse, because few people have the balls to make something that tragic up. It's like, bad karma and stuff (if you believe in that crap, which you obviously don't if you're thinking of excuses in the first place). You can say that your mom called and told you about it right before the exam, and you were on the phone consoling her for hours afterward. It was the house you grew up in, sniff, and you have so many great memories associated with it (cue teary eyes here). Benefits include:

• You don't have to provide a doctor's note. If pressed, you can always find a house that burned down in your area somewhere. Bring in a newspaper article if you have to. Houses burn down all the time, why can't one of them be yours?
• Holy randomness, Batman! The fact that you're even using it as an excuse means that it has to be true, right? People just don't make that kind of shit up! The sheer audacity of the excuse is what makes it totally believable.

As with all good excuses, you need to really cover your bases with this one. You need to know what started the imaginary fire, whether your parents have insurance and if the house is totally burned down, or if the kitchen is still standing. Detail is key. Did you lose a pet in the fire? Did your mother's Hummel figurine collection survive?

Only a total dick would call bullshit on this excuse. If your professor doesn't go for it, you should drop the class (and then write an angry letter to your dean). After all, you're not likely to learn much from such a heartless douchebag.

3.) Kill a fake family member. Do you have an Aunt Lucy? No? Good, because she just died. It was a heart attack, and she was your favorite family member in the history of ever. She never saw it coming, either, the poor thing. Heart disease is the silent killer, after all. And you just took her out for her birthday last week, too. Benefits include:

• Again, you don't need a doctor's note.
• It's super easy to fake, and you don't need much (if any) documentation.
• It buys you as much time as you need to recover from your loss. If you took it particularly hard, you may be out of commission for a week, maybe even two!
• If you can pull yourself together and get back to class after a couple of days, the professor will forever respect you for being such a strong individual.

The thing with killing off family members is that it can lead you down a slippery slope. Once you discover how easy it is, you might start killing off more. Soon, your whole family will be gone and you'll be left an orphan. Plus, if you ever have a family member really croak, the professor might not go for it.

So, those are my top excuses. However, I'm always looking for more (I've burned dozens of houses already...must be some sort of pyromaniac on the loose), so feel free to list yours in the comment section!