Skip School
School can be the worst, and sometimes you just need a day to yourself. A little creative thinking is all you need to get out of your classes and enjoy a day of relaxing free time. Here are some methods you can use to skip school and make your absence believable.
Contents
Steps
Faking Sickness
- Set the scene. If you are going to pretend to be sick, tell your parents that you don't feel well a couple of days beforehand. Your sickness will be more believable if your parents see some symptoms before the actual sick day.
- To fake a stomach ache, tell your parents that you may have eaten something bad at school.
- To fake a cold, say that your throat has been feeling a little scratchy.
- Amp it up the night before by waking up in the middle of the night and telling your parents that you’re feeling bad. Either mimic your stomach/cold symptoms from earlier in the day, or just say, “I feel like I’m getting sick” or “my body just doesn’t feel right.”
- Wake up "sick". Get up a little later than you should. Tell your parents you’re not feeling so great. Act like you’re sick.
- Walk around slowly, like your muscles are achy. Don’t fix your messy sleepyhead hair.
- If you’ve been faking cold/flu symptoms, cough and sneeze a little and say you’re feeling dizzy. If you’ve been faking stomach symptoms, rub your stomach and moan that it hurts.
- Don't eat too much breakfast. Sick people often lose their appetites, so this will help with the illusion.
- Fake a fever. Your parents will probably want to check if you have a fever or not, since a fever can be the sign of true illness. To convince them you’re really sick, you’ll need to make them believe you have a temperature.
- Before your parents ask to feel your forehead, wet a cloth and then heat it in the microwave for thirty seconds. Make sure that it’s cool enough not to burn you, and then put the towel on your forehead for a minute or so. This will heat up your head and body, and your forehead will be nice and warm.
- Boil some water on the stove (this is only recommended for older kids). Pour the boiling water down the sink, and when steam rises, stand with your face over the sink until it feels flushed. This will warm up your face, and when cool air touches you, you’ll also feel clammy.
- Do not put your face directly over a fire, stove, or boiling water to fake a fever. These methods can be unsafe and may result in burns.
- Warm a mouth or underarm thermometer by rubbing it in your hands until it reaches about 99-101 degrees Fahrenheit (any higher and you might risk a trip to the hospital). You can also warm the thermometer under running hot water until it reaches a high temperature.
- Put on a brave face at first, then give in. If your parents ask if you want to stay home, don't say yes immediately. You need to act like missing school is a really hard decision to make.
- Think about it for a minute or two and say something like, "But I want to go to PE." Then tell them, "On second thought, I'm not sure I can make it all day at school."
- When your parents agree to let you stay home, you are free to do whatever you want.
- Keep up the act to make it believable. Even though you have a day to yourself, you’ll still have to pretend to be sick all day long, at least while your parents are around.
- Act really sick all morning long, then slowly pretend that you’re feeling a little better throughout the day.
- The next morning, act like you still don’t feel your best, but are just strong enough to go to school.
Sneaking Away from School
- Know the risks. Many schools have monitors, cameras, security guards, and teachers on the lookout for people leaving school. You may have to take some big risks if you decide to skip school this way.
- Read up on your school’s rules before your skip day, and be ready for the consequences if you get caught.
- Leave school at the right moment. If you want to get off campus for the day, you need to get away when you are least likely to be noticed. This is usually when there are lots of students around.
- Leaving at the very beginning of the day will probably get you noticed, since most kids are going into the school and not away from it.
- Try going to your first class so you can at least be seen, and then slip away in between classes. You can also do this between afternoon classes, or around lunchtime.
- Keep an eye on the time. You don’t want to alert your teachers and parents that you haven’t been in class by being late coming back. While you’re out and about, check the time every so often to see how much free time you have left.
- Give yourself enough time to change back into your school clothes (if you’ve changed out of them) and get back on school grounds by the time the last bell rings.
- Be sure to turn up at the regular time and place your bus arrives or your parents pick you up at the end of the school day. If teachers see you and ask where you’ve been, say that you‘ve been in the bathroom sick or at an appointment. Just make sure your parents don't hear from a teacher that you weren’t in class.
Making Excuses
- Pretend not to finish your homework. In the morning, make a big deal about not completing a really important assignment - act panicked, pretend to cry, and furiously try to finish your work. If your parents see you so upset, they might take pity on you and let you stay home to do your homework.
- This won’t work with every parent. Some parents will send you to school so you can learn a lesson about finishing your work on time.
- Miss your bus. If your parents expect you to get to the bus on your own, simply missing your ride will guarantee you a day off. Walk really slowly to the bus stop so you miss the bus, or just hide until the bus is gone and go back home.
- You can also leave the house late (without making it look deliberate) and then run behind the bus, pretending that you don't want to miss the bus. Then, pretend to be sad that you missed your bus. If students in your school don't live in your area, you can roam around to avoid being caught by your parents. Otherwise, walk straight home and pretending to be sad, tell your parents that you missed your bus.
- If your parents are strict, and are still at home after you were supposed to catch the bus, or if they come home from work midday, you will have to sneak around so they don’t know you aren't at school.
- Know your risks! If your neighbour sees you missed the bus, they might tell your parents.
- Change your parents' alarm. This can be simple if you do it carefully, but it also poses some risks: you're almost sure to get found out, and you may make your parents late for work.
- Take your parents’ alarm clock or phone while they’re sleeping and turn the alarm forward 1-2 hours. (So if the alarm is supposed to go off at 6am, change it to go off at 7 or 8am.) Then put the alarm back. When the alarm rings, your parents will panic about being late and (probably) won’t have time to take you to school.
- If one parent sets the alarm, you’ll only have to change one clock or phone. However, if there are multiple alarms, you’ll have to change them all.
Making it Believable
- Fake a note from your parents. When you’ve skipped a school day, your school will want to know where you’ve been. Write a pretend note from your parents to explain why you missed a day.
- You can choose any excuse that sounds real, like you had to go to a funeral, had a dentist appointment, or that a pet died.
- Type the note instead of writing it by hand. Your handwriting probably doesn’t look like an adult’s handwriting to a teacher, so it won’t be convincing. Typing the note is safer, and it will also look more official.
- Talk about your fake missed day where teachers can hear you. Make up really good details about the day you had when you were out of school - what happened, who you saw, how you felt. Then, use those details to have a conversation with your friends in earshot of a teacher.
- Say things about how sad it was to see so many crying people at a funeral, or how long and annoying it was to get your teeth cleaned at the dentist.
- Ask to make up the work you missed. Most teachers know that kids skip school to get out of doing work, so your teachers will never guess that you skipped if you ask for makeup work the next day. This will also make you look a like a responsible student.
- To make it even more believable, act like you really want to do the work, even if you don’t.
Tips
- It can be harder to convince your parents that you’re sick if they are stressed out or irritable, so make sure that they are in a good mood the day you decide to fake sickness.
- If you get caught, don’t make a scene - just tell the truth. Lying will probably get you into more trouble, and if you tell the truth, your punishment may be reduced.
- If you suck at acting, just turn your alarm clock off and say that it turned off automatically or that the alarm just didn't go off. If your parents are the ones waking you up, say that you fell asleep right after they woke you up (Varies from parent to parent, on how stubborn/dedicated they are to get you to school).
- Make sure you can make an believable scene to being sick, or at least know the risks that it takes because if you don't your parents could not believe you the next time you are really sick.
- YOU can rub your head to make it seem that you have a fever.
- Do not get out of bed.
- Make sure your parents or guardian doesn't stress easily; you can end up taking medicine.
Warnings
- These tips will generally not work if you are home-schooled.
- If you are being bullied or have a similar issue in school, skipping will not eliminate the problem. Tell a trusted adult immediately if this is happening to you.
- If you are in elementary school, do not ever go out into the world alone.
- If you make a habit of skipping school, you might be expelled. Therefore, it's best that you don't skip school unless you're desperate for a day off.
- Skipping or missing school is called “truancy.” If you are consistently truant, you and your parents could face legal consequences.
