Advice to a Student

As student papers roll in, I cannot help but return to Timothy Steele's poem "Advice to a Student." For some reason, I've always been particularly fond of this quatrain, from the final stanza:

Always present yourself as one
Who, neither saint nor God,
Didn't quite get the assignment done,
Being tragically flawed.

As you might gather from these lines, the poem recommends that students construct their excuses according to Aristotelian guidelines. It's not earth-shaking poetry, but it is clever. You can find the whole thing in Steele's collection The Color Wheel.