Please always remember to indicate the reason for any excuses you accept: these are entered into the database, and are critical in later negotiations between the student and the laboratory manager. The typical student cannot remember the reasons they were given excuses, and even if they can, the record of them adds credibility to their claims, so that that the laboratory managers can more easily separate those who have had genuine difficulties from those who have been lazy. If you don't record them it is very likely that you will be asked to remember them yourself several months later! There isn't much space in the boxes provided, so a simple technique is to write ``E#1'' in the box, and then down at the bottom of the page write ``#1 - family illness'', for example. As long as it's clear, the team of data-entry demonstrators who enters most of the data, will be able to make sense of it.