The dead grandmother syndrome

being an academic, I get to see bright and enthusiastic students every day who cheer me up with their joy, their views of life and wonder at the future. .... except...

now I am also the course coordinator for the BSc(Information Technology) and academic advisor for the faculty of engineering and IT for IT undergraduates. This means, apart from my normal teaching and research workload, I have the additional joy of dealing with special considerations, misconduct appeals, exclusion "suspension" appeals, heaps of paperwork and administrivia and ... blarghhh!!!

Normally it's great. But one thing I have noticed (and my fellow coordinators and directors) is the dreaded .... drumroll ... DEAD GRANDMOTHER SYNDROME.

It seems that for some unknown reason, grandmothers start to get sick just before the final assignments are due at the end of semester, then die just before the exam. In fact, sometimes students claim all 5 grandmothers   have died over their past 3 years at uni. Oh, wait, was that the other grandma? Oh, sorry, we don't have death notices or records in vietnam. Oh, I meant my girlfriend's grandmother.

But seriously, here is a paper on the dead grandmother syndrome, also called the "The Toadstool Waxing Plan" in bulgaria. See http://www.cis.gsu.edu/~dstraub/Courses/Grandma.htm


Further research is needed over why grandfathers don't have the same problem...