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Reader question: Please explain “cookie-cutter excuses” in this sentence: I never believe my students when they give me cookie-cutter excuses for why they didn’t do their homework. My comments: This is a teacher who doesn’t buy it whenever one of his students gives him a ready-made excuse for why he/she didn’t do the homework. For one thing, the excuses from students are always the same (or extremely alike). Open a bag of cookies and pour them onto the table. You see that the cookies are all the same in size and shape. Why? Simple, because they have all been carved out by the same cookie-cutter, which, of course, is a device used precisely for this purpose – mass-producing cookies that are exactly the same in size, shape and weight. So therefore, metaphorically, if the teacher says his students all give him cookie-cutter excuses, he means to say that the excuses are all the same. For instance, they are all sick. Ring a bell? In fact, my teacher back in college once expressed the same opinion as the teacher in your example does. “I don’t really mind,” he said, “someone missing class once or twice a semester, but one day three students called in early to say they’re to miss the class tomorrow because they were sick. Do you guys think teachers are so easy to fool?” Sympathies. Well, the real reason behind such truant playing is, as my teacher pointed out, that they haven’t written the paper they are supposed to hand in that day. Very probable. | 
