Back in my last year of college, during my penultimate term, I was taking a VHDL course. There were no homework assignments, quizzes, or tests, just 5 labs and a project with two presentations, all of which was done with a lab partner. The professor was also known for being a very easy grader; unless you were really terrible, you'd get at least a B.
So midway through the term, we've finished two labs and the first presentation and are looking good grade-wise. Then my partner up and vanishes. I still don't what the deal was; he never showed up to class again, and never responded to my IMs/emails. I wasted over a week of lab time waiting for him to appear, and then had to start working on the labs alone. Now, these labs were intended to be a lot of work for two people on time, and were a nightmare for one person who was already behind and not very good with VHDL in the first place. So the professor decides to give me a break and tells me to forget about the project and focus on just completing the labs.
A few weeks later, I still haven't finished a single lab. I commiserate with the TA, who was a regular student in one of my classes, and he tells me that I should abandon the labs and just do the project. Since I'm completely stumped on all 3 labs, and have only a couple weeks left in the term, this seems like a good idea.
Problem is, the final project was made for people who'd already completed all the labs and learned from them. I spent several full days working on the project without accomplishing a damn thing. But I realized I had a way out. See, many of the other groups had troubles completing the project, had hit errors they couldn't fix. So all I had to do was explain during the presentation that I'd encountered some unsolvable problem and been unable to finish, and then talk about what my project would have been like. The professor would probably dock quite a few points once he received my work and saw just how little progress I'd made, but I only needed something like a 20 to get a passing grade overall.
The big day comes around. I'm sitting in the classroom watching other people give their presentations and it suddenly hits me that everyone else actually knows their shit. Sure, they had hit snags along the way, but they'd clearly learned a lot from the class. To go up there and pretend to be one of them, to claim that I was just like them and deserved the same grade they did... that would've been nothing less than cheating. So right in the middle of someone's presentation I just stood up and walked out of the room.
Imagine my amazement several days later when I discovered that I've gotten a B for the class. I checked online and soon figured out what had happened: my TA, after telling me to forget the labs, had given the ones I hadn't completed a default grade of 80. The professor, meanwhile, thinking that I was doing just labs, ignored my lack of a project and graded me solely on the lab work, including the 3 fake 80s. And that was that. The grades had already been made official, so there was no chance of the professor or TA reviewing things and catching the mistake. All I had to do was stay quiet and accept my B.
Now you have to realize, an F in that class could've really hurt me. Depending on the grades for my other courses that term, I might've lost my scholarship and been forced to pay several thousand extra for the last term. Since I wouldn't have time to retake the class, it would be a black mark on my academic record, something every potential employer would notice. If the right classes weren't offered next term, I might've been unable to even graduate on time, forced to stay an extra term or two until a suitable class was available. And it was a victimless crime, to boot. The professor didn't want to fail me, I didn't want to fail, and I had no intention of using VHDL ever again. There were a million reasons not to speak up, and only one for it: because it was the right thing to do.
I took the F.
You do realise that the proffesor was almost obliged to give you a good mark in the situation you found yourself in, and that being awarded the average mark is a quite common compensation for a lost partner in a situation where one is absolutely required.
You sir shot yourself in the foot for absolutely no reason, I would imagine your foolish and pointless honesty in demanding a bad grade is the stuff of much hilarity in the lecturing circles at whichever school you went to.
Back in my last year of college, during my penultimate term, I was taking a VHDL course. There were no homework assignments, quizzes, or tests, just 5 labs and a project with two presentations, all of which was done with a lab partner. The professor was also known for being a very easy grader; unless you were really terrible, you'd get at least a B.
So midway through the term, we've finished two labs and the first presentation and are looking good grade-wise. Then my partner up and vanishes. I still don't what the deal was; he never showed up to class again, and never responded to my IMs/emails. I wasted over a week of lab time waiting for him to appear, and then had to start working on the labs alone. Now, these labs were intended to be a lot of work for two people on time, and were a nightmare for one person who was already behind and not very good with VHDL in the first place. So the professor decides to give me a break and tells me to forget about the project and focus on just completing the labs.
A few weeks later, I still haven't finished a single lab. I commiserate with the TA, who was a regular student in one of my classes, and he tells me that I should abandon the labs and just do the project. Since I'm completely stumped on all 3 labs, and have only a couple weeks left in the term, this seems like a good idea.
Problem is, the final project was made for people who'd already completed all the labs and learned from them. I spent several full days working on the project without accomplishing a damn thing. But I realized I had a way out. See, many of the other groups had troubles completing the project, had hit errors they couldn't fix. So all I had to do was explain during the presentation that I'd encountered some unsolvable problem and been unable to finish, and then talk about what my project would have been like. The professor would probably dock quite a few points once he received my work and saw just how little progress I'd made, but I only needed something like a 20 to get a passing grade overall.
The big day comes around. I'm sitting in the classroom watching other people give their presentations and it suddenly hits me that everyone else actually knows their shit. Sure, they had hit snags along the way, but they'd clearly learned a lot from the class. To go up there and pretend to be one of them, to claim that I was just like them and deserved the same grade they did... that would've been nothing less than cheating. So right in the middle of someone's presentation I just stood up and walked out of the room.
Imagine my amazement several days later when I discovered that I've gotten a B for the class. I checked online and soon figured out what had happened: my TA, after telling me to forget the labs, had given the ones I hadn't completed a default grade of 80. The professor, meanwhile, thinking that I was doing just labs, ignored my lack of a project and graded me solely on the lab work, including the 3 fake 80s. And that was that. The grades had already been made official, so there was no chance of the professor or TA reviewing things and catching the mistake. All I had to do was stay quiet and accept my B.
Now you have to realize, an F in that class could've really hurt me. Depending on the grades for my other courses that term, I might've lost my scholarship and been forced to pay several thousand extra for the last term. Since I wouldn't have time to retake the class, it would be a black mark on my academic record, something every potential employer would notice. If the right classes weren't offered next term, I might've been unable to even graduate on time, forced to stay an extra term or two until a suitable class was available. And it was a victimless crime, to boot. The professor didn't want to fail me, I didn't want to fail, and I had no intention of using VHDL ever again. There were a million reasons not to speak up, and only one for it: because it was the right thing to do.
I took the F.
You probably could have at least gotten a "Withdrawal" or something from the class, given your circumstances...
When my dad was at uni he was something of an amature photographer, and had quite a few 'artistic' pictures of nudes. One of his lecturers (a small white haired chap, apparently) used slides and a projector for his lectures. My dad, sitting at the back, slipped one of his nude slides into the projector. Prompting a shocked 'Ooh!' from the lecturer, folloew by a pause, and 'I wonder if there are any more?'.
apparently he was quite dissapointed when there wasnt.
Roblo on
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
You sir shot yourself in the foot for absolutely no reason, I would imagine your foolish and pointless honesty in demanding a bad grade is the stuff of much hilarity in the lecturing circles at whichever school you went to.
It was his obligation to let the professor know that he hadn't been exempted from the final. The prof shouldn't have failed him completely in the class for that, however, his honesty was admirable.
In my GCSE Spanish listening exam, where we listened to a recorded tape of a Spanish person speaking about what he likes to do and whatnot, one of the questions was "What are Juan's two favourite hobbies?".
I got the first one, but not the second one, so instead of leaving it blank I wrote "Juan likes to gut small kittens".
Also, for my Business Studies A Level exam, I got an A, 100%, even though I answered one paragraph for a 2 page question. I didn't understand.
EDIT: I always finish tests early. I write fast I guess. In one of my science class tests in Secondary school, I finished early and drew an alligator in the margin, biting the hole-punched hole in the paper. I got it back, marked, with the words "Do not draw in the margins" scribbled above the alligator. Teachers can be no fun sometimes.
In Senior Year of College, I took a Women's History class as my free elective. My final paper was a 15 page analysis on why breakfast cereal mascots were sexist, or some such nonsense. Other than the usual analysis of the media and blah blah blah, I spent about half the paper analyzing the big cereal mascots (Tony the Tiger, Trix Rabbit, Lucky Charms Leprechauns, and Snap, Crackle, and Pop), started bringing up cereal commercials through the ages (or at least the 80's through today, the ones I remember), talked about how cereal mascots were role models for kids, and closed with the line "In conclusion, feminism is GRRRRRRREAT". I got a B.
I've also gotten a report back with the words "OBVIOUSLY PLAGIARIZED" written in big red ink on the front. I sort of took it as a compliment, as this was eighth grade and I had actually written it. I just pulled my sources and showed the teacher, and got my full credit.
Happened to me too. It's definitely a point of pride.
You do realise that the proffesor was almost obliged to give you a good mark in the situation you found yourself in, and that being awarded the average mark is a quite common compensation for a lost partner in a situation where one is absolutely required.
You sir shot yourself in the foot for absolutely no reason, I would imagine your foolish and pointless honesty in demanding a bad grade is the stuff of much hilarity in the lecturing circles at whichever school you went to.
Foolish and pointless honesty? It looks like I'll have to share the epilogue to the story, then.
I chose RIT over all other engineering colleges for one sole reason: they offered classes in Japanese, which I wanted to minor in. And I did, for the first few years of school. But during my last year, my class schedule became too busy, and I was forced to either take an extra term of school or drop my minor. So I stopped taking Japanese classes.
After I received my F, I needed to find another course to use as a professional elective. I can't remember anything about the course I signed up for, only that on the first day of classes, the professor emailed to say that I didn't meet the prereqs for it and needed to find something else. I began desperately looking through course lists to find something that would qualify for a professional elective and fit into my already tight schedule. No luck. While I was going through the lists, I decided to check the Japanese classes. It was nothing more than idle curiosity; I was certain my schedule couldn't fit it in or the class would be full, and I'd have too much work that term anyway. Against all logic and reason, it was a perfect match to my schedule, and had exactly one opening left. It was mocking me.
Since I was unable to find a course on my own, I asked the Computer Engineering office for assistance, and their response was to just send me a list of professional electives. Wonderful. But as I perused the list, I saw a familiar name. A Computer Graphics course that I'd taken last year as a free elective actually qualified as a professional one. So now I no longer needed a professional elective, I just needed a free elective. And lucky me, I knew of a class with an open slot that worked with my schedule...
If I had passed my VHDL course, I never would've been looking through course schedules, and I never would have considered the possibility of continuing my minor. It is only because I failed that I received a second chance. And that was the only consequence of that F. I didn't lose my scholarship. I didn't have to stay an extra term. I didn't have any trouble finding a job after I graduated. I stuck to my ideals at a time when I had every reason not to, and it brought me nothing but happiness. Failing that course is one of the proudest moments of my life, and I'm very glad that the course wasn't just another easy A.
In a philosophy class one time a professor handed out an exam that was front-and-back, except for some reason my copy didn't print the back, only the front. I was not aware of this, I figured I had the whole test, and that it was just shorter than I expected.
I wasn't the first one finished, but I was almost the first one, which is slightly unusual for me (except the two-minute test above).
But since I wasn't the first one done, I shrugged it off, turned it in, and left.
The next week I got the test back with a frickin' rant from the professor written all over it in red ink, about my dishonesty as a student and about integrity and how I forced him into a spot where he was required to give me full credit and blah blah blah. It was paragraphs long.
I went to meet him after class, and we quickly and politely established the following things: 1) I had no way of knowing that my test was only half the test, 2) If he thought I was trying to get away with something, he shouldn't let me get away with it, 3) I fucking aced the shit out of the questions that I did answer, 4) I was probably the best student in the class, and 5) I was willing to take the test again any time, even right then and there. He let it go and left my grade at a 97%.
Since I wouldn't have time to retake the class, it would be a black mark on my academic record, something every potential employer would notice.
Employers don't give a flying fuck.
Thank god - or the grade inflation would be even worse than it is.
Seriouly i thought after high school people realized grades don't mean a god dammned thing.
Then, uh...what does matter?
Getting the degree in the end.
Beyond needing a certain average to remain in some programs, your grades don't matter a whole lot - unless, as mentioned before, you want to continue with grad school or something.
In a philosophy class one time a professor handed out an exam that was front-and-back, except for some reason my copy didn't print the back, only the front. I was not aware of this, I figured I had the whole test, and that it was just shorter than I expected.
I wasn't the first one finished, but I was almost the first one, which is slightly unusual for me (except the two-minute test above).
But since I wasn't the first one done, I shrugged it off, turned it in, and left.
The next week I got the test back with a frickin' rant from the professor written all over it in red ink, about my dishonesty as a student and about integrity and how I forced him into a spot where he was required to give me full credit and blah blah blah. It was paragraphs long.
I went to meet him after class, and we quickly and politely established the following things: 1) I had no way of knowing that my test was only half the test, 2) If he thought I was trying to get away with something, he shouldn't let me get away with it, 3) I fucking aced the shit out of the questions that I did answer, 4) I was probably the best student in the class, and 5) I was willing to take the test again any time, even right then and there. He let it go and left my grade at a 97%.
How did you "force" him into that position? Did he think that you left the classroom while his back was turned, photocopied only one side of the test, threw away the original and then answered only the photocopied half?
Highschool math went in a straight line, Algebra, Geometry, Algebra 2, Pre-Calc, Calc. Algebra you could take in 8th grade and skip straight to Geometry, which I did. Geometry was easy, just stayed in back playing with my graphing calculator, averaged a B. Algebra 2 was different. The classes were split between an upperclassmen class and a lowerclassmen class. The lower classmen classes were full so I got put into the upper classmen. Me a sophmore in a class with mostly all Seniors should have been fun. Should have. I literally slept through every single class, never looked at the text book, and never did any homework. The only thing the teacher graded was the tests. No work was required to be shown, so I didn't show any. I finished them in an average of 7 to 10 minutes with the longest taking 15 and the shortest taking 3. Not sure how I did it, but I did. By the end of the class, the teacher was acusing me of cheating, in an effort to prove him wrong I sat next to his desk and did the last 3 tests. I didn't have any programs or anything in my calculator (which he actually allowed anyways). I was able to remember which steps I did in the problems he gave, along with the answer to the variables (multi unknown variable problems with only the final variable being the answer to the question). Did theses tests inabout 10 minutes each, teacher was furious but forced to give me the A due to his grading criteria. But due to me being the young one, the seniors in the class ended up being rather unfriendly with me as I made fools of them as they took all period to finish the class.
That same year, my english teacher didn't like me, and I didn't like her. She would give me lower grades than what I should have because she didn't like the topics I wrote about. I couldn't remember what the topics were, but the papers were usually grammatically correct and spelling was usually correct. She just didn't like the paper so she gave a bad grade. My parents got into it with the school, but they wouldn't change anything for a reason I can't remember. So, for one of the last grades for the class we had to do a 15 to 17 minute presentation, every 5 seconds under or above were a point off the final score. But if you hit the middle, 16 minutes, exactly you arebe giving an automatic 50% credit. We were allowed to use what ever visual aids we wanted to use (movies, pictures, slides). I was trying hard, but by about a week before I was to speak, I went "fuck it"
I put together a 16 minute movie. The first 30 seconds or so was me saying "I don't like you, Mrs. whatsherface. You don't like me. Lets watch people getting shot" followed by 15 minutes of people being shot in movies. Can't remember any of the scenes I used, but I know a couple were rather gory. After the 15 minutes, there was me saying "And thats my presentation" Followed by a middle finger. For this presentation I just walked up to the front, put the movie in and sat at my desk. The presentation started as soon as I said a word, or pushed play on the VCR, to the moment I sat back down after turning the movie off. The total presentation time was 16 minutes exactly. She "forgot" to stop the stop watch right away and so my official time was 16 minutes and 10 seconds.
Needless to say, I got a F on the presentation and course and did a summer english class and got myself an A, but I'm not sure how.
The next year, my Junior year, we had a project in English called "The Magazine Project". Essentially, you are giving a certain amount of fake money, and you had to produce a magazine. You could write articles for other student's magazines for fake money and buy articles for your magazine. You can also write your own articles for your magazine, but you had to buy a total of 7 articles. You needed a total of 21 articles in the magazine. An article was ANYTHING written by you or a classmate that the teacher deemed tasteful and agreed on. Could be something you wrote when 6, could be something you wrote yesterday, it didn't matter. Your magazine also had to have a theme and follow it as well. This project took the last month of class as it was actually half your grade and was set up by the entire english department so the entire Junior class was doing it.
I did bare minimum as I didn't like the subject, and was still jaded from the previous year. Didn't read any of the books we were to read but managed to get average C on the tests. I didn't do any of the written assignments since they weren't graded, but from the beginning of the year we were told of the magazine project and were told what we had to do for it, so the written assignments were supposed to provide content for said magazine. Well, come magazine time, I sat in class just reading what ever book I was reading at the time, not doing any work. Come presentation time, I went to class, got myself attended, then slipped out the door and just sorta left for the day. Did that for the last week of class as each day we toured the other classes to see their magazines.
If you couldn't tell, I didn't do it. Not one bit. Didn't write anything. Absolutely nothing. By that point I just didn't care.
I get my report card in the mail a couple weeks after class ends, ready to explain the F in english again, but to my surprise I got a B. Before the Magazine Project I was a C student. The project was half the grade and I didn't do any part of it and managed to increase the grade to a B. I was flabbergasted, my parents were happy, and I just couldn't think of the words to even begin to understand how it happened. I still don't know how it happened, 5 years later.
In a philosophy class one time a professor handed out an exam that was front-and-back, except for some reason my copy didn't print the back, only the front. I was not aware of this, I figured I had the whole test, and that it was just shorter than I expected.
I wasn't the first one finished, but I was almost the first one, which is slightly unusual for me (except the two-minute test above).
But since I wasn't the first one done, I shrugged it off, turned it in, and left.
The next week I got the test back with a frickin' rant from the professor written all over it in red ink, about my dishonesty as a student and about integrity and how I forced him into a spot where he was required to give me full credit and blah blah blah. It was paragraphs long.
I went to meet him after class, and we quickly and politely established the following things: 1) I had no way of knowing that my test was only half the test, 2) If he thought I was trying to get away with something, he shouldn't let me get away with it, 3) I fucking aced the shit out of the questions that I did answer, 4) I was probably the best student in the class, and 5) I was willing to take the test again any time, even right then and there. He let it go and left my grade at a 97%.
How did you "force" him into that position? Did he think that you left the classroom while his back was turned, photocopied only one side of the test, threw away the original and then answered only the photocopied half?
What a buffoon.
Yar should have magically assumed there should have been a second page to the test. By not making this genius, telepathic conclusion based on no evidence, he forced the teacher into that position.
Duh.
People in authority project their failures on those their mistakes impinge on all the time. Nothing new at all.
In a philosophy class one time a professor handed out an exam that was front-and-back, except for some reason my copy didn't print the back, only the front. I was not aware of this, I figured I had the whole test, and that it was just shorter than I expected.
I wasn't the first one finished, but I was almost the first one, which is slightly unusual for me (except the two-minute test above).
But since I wasn't the first one done, I shrugged it off, turned it in, and left.
The next week I got the test back with a frickin' rant from the professor written all over it in red ink, about my dishonesty as a student and about integrity and how I forced him into a spot where he was required to give me full credit and blah blah blah. It was paragraphs long.
I went to meet him after class, and we quickly and politely established the following things: 1) I had no way of knowing that my test was only half the test, 2) If he thought I was trying to get away with something, he shouldn't let me get away with it, 3) I fucking aced the shit out of the questions that I did answer, 4) I was probably the best student in the class, and 5) I was willing to take the test again any time, even right then and there. He let it go and left my grade at a 97%.
How did you "force" him into that position? Did he think that you left the classroom while his back was turned, photocopied only one side of the test, threw away the original and then answered only the photocopied half?
What a buffoon.
Yar should have magically assumed there should have been a second page to the test. By not making this genius, telepathic conclusion based on no evidence, he forced the teacher into that position.
Duh.
Divination? Balderdash. He should have noticed the other page when he was copying off the other students' papers.
I've only really cheated once. Sophomore World History class in high school, and we were supposed to memorize all of the nations in the Middle East and northern Africa, so that we could fill in a map with the correct names. Except nobody really bothered doing it, because fuck, that's a lot of countries. We'd been given sample maps that looked identical to what the test would be, so the class - by which I mean pretty much the whole class - just sat there with the sample maps on the floor and copied the answers.
I'd probably have felt guiltier about it if the whole class hadn't done it. I had a strong suspicion, as well, that the teacher knew we were all cheating and just didn't much care.
Other than that, there's been the occasional lab where we had to run an experiment 5 times, and after 3 or 4 getting nigh-identical results, I just made up the rest.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I had to write an essay for my english class about a 'hero in the novel To Kill A Mockingbird'. Apparently there was some sort of handout that had a list of heros we could choose from that I either didn't get, got and lost, or ate. Regardless, I wrote the essay on Calpurnia, the female black servant who takes the kids to her church. She was not on the list.
My teacher gave me a 50, saying that I obviously just wanted to cause trouble. I told her that more trouble would probably be caused if an essay about a black person failed on the principle that the character wasn't on an all-white list to choose from. (This teacher already had some problems with race, but thats another story).
Strangly, the next day my grade was a 95, written over a whited out 50.
In retrospect, I was probably a dick about it, but that teacher was fired later in the year for calling a black student a racial slur where she thought no one could hear her.
For my Highschool english exams, I would frequently cite and quote movies in my examples. I recall using various Star Wars episodes and The Rock among them, and usually did pretty well anyways.
However, one adventure that I was proud of was during an application to a Theatrical Production program at a local university. As a part of it, we were shown clips of various movies and asked questions about composition and whatnot. One of the final questions asked about a picture that was included, and for us to write a short story about it.
It was a black and white photo of a city street. People walking on the sidewalk, trees, houses, a few cars, etc.
I decided to write my story from the perspective of one of the lamp posts.
I wove a tale regarding it's existance, getting to know the frequent inhabitants of the street, seeing and hearing their woes and small victories from it's regular perch, and the other objects commonly around. The tale ended with her (I believe I alluded to it being female) realizing that in the early morning, another post had been damaged by a road accident, and had to be taken away. I felt it was one of the more creative things I'd ever written, but sadly I wasn't accepted.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I once produced a history presentation entitled Stalin-Behind the laughter.
One of the funniest moments was when one my friends handed in an essay written entirly on post-it notes to the strictest teacher in the school.
In a philosophy exam I got a question asking what jobs shouldn't a christian take. Unfortuantly I hated that class as it was described as 'Philosophy and Ethics' but it was just advanced Religous Studies, all about christians. As I'm an atheist and wanted to know about philosphers this kind of pissed me off. I didn't learn any of the Bible quotes we were supposed to learn. using the 10 commandments I thought up as many careers possible. Christians would not become idol makers etc. Got an A.
In the same class we had to produce a presentation on death and the afterlife (Christain views of course). I managed to persuade my friends to do it through the medium of sock puppets. My teacher didn't know whether to laugh or cry
World History, 10th grade. Last couple weeks of school, we are given our final. I was in the bathroom when the assignment was announced, so the scene went like this
*enters room*
Some guy: Man, thats kinda hard.
Me: What is?
Teacher: The final, a 4 page paper on the most infulental person of the 20th century.
Me: Dibs on Hitler
Teacher: Nick has dibs.
Me: Can I also do Hitler and just make his paper look horrible by comparison?
Teacher:No.
Me: Can I proclaim myself as the most influental person?
Teacher:If you want to fail.
We had like, 4 weeks to do this. So every day in class was spent in the computer lab for research/writing. 2 weeks into this, im still randomly searching google for inspiration to the most influential person of the 20th century. Other than Hitler. The teacher had been bugging me for two weeks about it, as I had essential gotten 0 work done.
By Wednesday of Week 3, he walks up behind me.
Teacher: Pick someone.
Me: I was planning to
Teacher: No, you've just sat here doing nothing, pick someone now.
Me:... Fine. I picked someone.
Teacher: Who?
Me:I dont know his name. Its David something. He founded the SAS
Teacher: You're making this up
Me: Really? Cause im betting my final grade and a 5 page paper that I'm not.
Teacher: Whatever. Its due Monday
Come Monday I had a beautiful 5-1/2 page paper on Sir David Stirling, founder of the British 22nd Special Air Service, one of the first modern special operations and counter terrorism units. Forerunners to GSG9, Delta Force, Australian SAS, and the modern SWAT team. A couple pages describing Stirling's life, his creation of the unit, how the unit changed things, and how basically every Hostage Rescue thats ever been completed can be in some way based off of tactics or equipment designed by The SAS.
I got an A+ and an apology.
CangoFett on
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
World History, 10th grade. Last couple weeks of school, we are given our final. I was in the bathroom when the assignment was announced, so the scene went like this
*enters room*
Some guy: Man, thats kinda hard.
Me: What is?
Teacher: The final, a 4 page paper on the most infulental person of the 20th century.
Me: Dibs on Hitler
Teacher: Nick has dibs.
Me: Can I also do Hitler and just make his paper look horrible by comparison?
Teacher:No.
Me: Can I proclaim myself as the most influental person?
Teacher:If you want to fail.
We had like, 4 weeks to do this. So every day in class was spent in the computer lab for research/writing. 2 weeks into this, im still randomly searching google for inspiration to the most influential person of the 20th century. Other than Hitler. The teacher had been bugging me for two weeks about it, as I had essential gotten 0 work done.
By Wednesday of Week 3, he walks up behind me.
Teacher: Pick someone.
Me: I was planning to
Teacher: No, you've just sat here doing nothing, pick someone now.
Me:... Fine. I picked someone.
Teacher: Who?
Me:I dont know his name. Its David something. He founded the SAS
Teacher: You're making this up
Me: Really? Cause im betting my final grade and a 5 page paper that I'm not.
Teacher: Whatever. Its due Monday
Come Monday I had a beautiful 5-1/2 page paper on Sir David Stirling, founder of the British 22nd Special Air Service, one of the first modern special operations and counter terrorism units. Forerunners to GSG9, Delta Force, Australian SAS, and the modern SWAT team. A couple pages describing Stirling's life, his creation of the unit, how the unit changed things, and how basically every Hostage Rescue thats ever been completed can be in some way based off of tactics or equipment designed by The SAS.
I got an A+ and an apology.
Yeah, I did that a lot, even through college, and got pretty decent marks.
Ironically, the ONE time I actually do something the way I'm supposed to (as in, research for months/weeks on end, meticulously get every detail I can find and make sure my citations are perfect, it was one of those term papers worth half of the final mark) is the one time I get accused of cheating and plagiarism.
I spend a few weeks wondering, nervously, if I forgot to put something in the bibliography, or if I subconciously copied something else a la "I wish I was taller", or oh shit that passage from the Chaucer poem wasn't cited.
As it turned out, my writing was apparently too good. Apparently the professor went to one of his friends in the english department and they apparently agreed that this writing couldn't have come from my hands.
I spend a half hour explaining my case and whatnot, telling him to go talk to the english professor I've been taking for two of the past three semesters, and even give him some other work. He finally relents on the charge of plagiarism.
Okay, so my final project for Science. Five 2000 word essays on the affect of technological advances on C21 life - I chose the Internet, Nanotechnology, Artificial Intelligence, Genetic Engineering and something else. Possible cloning. The actual essays? Fantastic - got top marks for.
The seminar where I had to explain my project my class though?
Well, I'd been up for 3 days straight just using proplus. I'd had college for those three days, then went and worked 9 hour shifts after all of them. I was, in short, a complete fucking mess.
I make my presentation in Apple Keynote the night before - I decide that I don't really have any way of using my content, so I'll wow everybody with style and some nicely edited Quicktime movies, including some hand captured Halo footage (to show AI) that took me about 3 hours to get. The presentation is beautiful, and I know that I'm the only person in my class that could do something like this*
Get into college the day of my presentation. Have exported my Keynote files as both Quicktime Interactive and Powerpoint files to cover all my bases. I have about twenty minutes before I'm due, so I decide to do a test run.
Disaster. The college doesn't have QT installed on many of it's computers, and those it does are all in the design dept**. TRo top it off, none of them are powerful enough to handle a 1024*768 video file. I fallback to my PPT copy.
Another disaster. All my fancy transitions have been lost, as have all my fancy shadowing and transparency effects. I've also lost all my video clips, so alot of my slides are plain black. No time to fix it properly, I delete the empty slides and stick in pictures culled from GIS where needed. The presentation is by this point a complete eyesore.
So finally I arrive on stage in front of about 100 of my peers. My presentation is shit and contains no content. I can barely stand, let alone speak coherently. So I start. Every single slide, I quickly read off what it says to the letter, then go off on a rant about what's missing - video footage, pictures etc. And I swear about it.
"Blah blah blah AI. Look, this is shit. It wasn't meant to be like this. What is this wank?"
"It's just crap! Oh, that bit loaded alright. Big fucking deal WHERE THE FUCK IS MY VIDEO FOOTAGE? I SPENT FUCKING HOURS DOING THAT!"
In the end I was just clicking through my slides without reading them just uttering the word "shit" very loudly at each one. My girlfriend had to come and drag me off the stage and out of the hall.
I didn't pass. Got pretty good marks overall though.
*The rest of my class could barelyt use PowerPoint, let alone own their own video capture equipment
**The art & design students hate the science and tech students. We return the favour.
I forget which class it was for, but some guys at my school did a presentation on a drug bust. They filmed it and had a bunch of people act out different parts. At one point, they were going to fake pistol-whipping someone in the head, but they accidentally hit them in the nose with some sort of realistic-looking airsoft gun. It was very dumb, but also fairly hilarious when they presented it in class.
Most of my antics took place in my two years of high school Physics. I had the same teacher who was really cool, but the class was way too easy because it assumed you didn't know any Calculus so that people who were shitty in math could take it and look good on their high school transcipts. Basically if you had the concepts down and knew calculus you could derive any formula you needed. Well, this meant I had WAY too much time during test days as it would take a whopping 15min to take the entire test. For some reason, everyone else took all hour and then some. Well, I decided that the metric system was shit and programed a bunch of obscure conversions into my calculator and on the next test I changed every answer from Meters and Kilograms into Slugs and Nautical Miles. I then proceeded to erase all my work and metric answer. He gave me full credit for it.
Also, on these tests next to your name, he had a line with a question in front of it. The questions were polls and after he got the tests graded he would tell us the results. Usually they were like "favorite color/show, what college do you hope to get into" et cetera. Well, one of them was "favorite state". He meant US state, but a bunch of smart asses wrote different states of matter. My friend, though, being the biggest smart ass in the room, wrote "intoxicated". We both laughed after class about it and forgot about it. A week later he went over the results of the poll and didn't mention my friend's witty comment. We were upset and he didn't answer us when we yelled about it. He just silently handed out the graded tests and my friend's test had a big "-1" on top of where he wrote intoxicated. The polls weren't worth credit, but he took a point off the test anyways.
One more time in this physics class, me and the same friend were doing a spring lab. We had to bounce a weight on this spring and with a stop watch find out what the spring constant was. The next day we were going to pull back the springs a distance we determined from the spring constant to shoot it off a ramp and hit a target 1 meter from the base of the ramp. Cool lab, right? Well, watching the thing bob while watching the stop watch SUCKED. And for the lab we had to do it 3 times and average them. We did it once and then completely made up the other two tests. I even made one of the tests a fair amount off from the first two so that it would look like we had an outlier. We then averaged them and turned it in. Next day the spring shooting starts. NO ONE can hit the target. Finally, one group gets the distance right, but the spring goes off to the left and doesn't hit the bullseye. But my teacher is impressed and gives them extra credit for being so accurate in their lab. Next up is me and my friend. Using our vaguely made up numbers, we pull the spring back a few centimeters, as accurately as we can and let it fly. It hits dead center. We are so anstonished we start dancing and gloating, yelling about having made up two of our tests and STILL beating everyone else. My teacher is pissed, but gives us the extra credit as well. Turns out we were the only group out of both physics classes to get a bullseye.
For a substantial (10 point) bonus to our final test score, we were instructed in my physical science class to construct a paper airplane, and the one that flew the farthest would win the prize. Now, this class was full of nerds (mostly part of my D&D crew) so as you can imagine, there was a torrential flood of wind checking, paper measuring, etc.
I'm no good at science, my forte is language. I knew I had very little chance, plus I have never been able to build a paper airplane in my life. So I stared at the question for a good ten minutes.
"For an extra ten points, you are to build a flying machine out of paper and whatever supplies you need to construct it The one that travels the farthest distance wins."
An idea forms.
So we all go outside, and the flying begins. I sort of stand in the back, waiting. Eventually everyone has gone but me, so I walk to the starting line. I pull a piece of paper from my folder, wad it around a rock, and throw it. Obviously, it travels a bit farther than the others.
Silence. Everyone sort of looks at me, then at the teacher, then at me again. This instructor had a reputation of being sort of a jerk, but in the way that he wanted to make you think instead of repeat facts. He just smiled and told me I won.
I think the rest of the class was a little pissed after that, but hey, it was the last week anyway.
For a substantial (10 point) bonus to our final test score, we were instructed in my physical science class to construct a paper airplane, and the one that flew the farthest would win the prize. Now, this class was full of nerds (mostly part of my D&D crew) so as you can imagine, there was a torrential flood of wind checking, paper measuring, etc.
I'm no good at science, my forte is language. I knew I had very little chance, plus I have never been able to build a paper airplane in my life. So I stared at the question for a good ten minutes.
"For an extra ten points, you are to build a flying machine out of paper and whatever supplies you need to construct it The one that travels the farthest distance wins."
An idea forms.
So we all go outside, and the flying begins. I sort of stand in the back, waiting. Eventually everyone has gone but me, so I walk to the starting line. I pull a piece of paper from my folder, wad it around a rock, and throw it. Obviously, it travels a bit farther than the others.
Silence. Everyone sort of looks at me, then at the teacher, then at me again. This instructor had a reputation of being sort of a jerk, but in the way that he wanted to make you think instead of repeat facts. He just smiled and told me I won.
I think the rest of the class was a little pissed after that, but hey, it was the last week anyway.
Posts
You do realise that the proffesor was almost obliged to give you a good mark in the situation you found yourself in, and that being awarded the average mark is a quite common compensation for a lost partner in a situation where one is absolutely required.
You sir shot yourself in the foot for absolutely no reason, I would imagine your foolish and pointless honesty in demanding a bad grade is the stuff of much hilarity in the lecturing circles at whichever school you went to.
You probably could have at least gotten a "Withdrawal" or something from the class, given your circumstances...
apparently he was quite dissapointed when there wasnt.
It was his obligation to let the professor know that he hadn't been exempted from the final. The prof shouldn't have failed him completely in the class for that, however, his honesty was admirable.
I got the first one, but not the second one, so instead of leaving it blank I wrote "Juan likes to gut small kittens".
Also, for my Business Studies A Level exam, I got an A, 100%, even though I answered one paragraph for a 2 page question. I didn't understand.
EDIT: I always finish tests early. I write fast I guess. In one of my science class tests in Secondary school, I finished early and drew an alligator in the margin, biting the hole-punched hole in the paper. I got it back, marked, with the words "Do not draw in the margins" scribbled above the alligator. Teachers can be no fun sometimes.
Employers don't give a flying fuck.
Thank god - or the grade inflation would be even worse than it is.
Seriouly i thought after high school people realized grades don't mean a god dammned thing.
Well, unless you plan on graduate school of some kind.
All depends on the field I suppose. I was a film major and damn grades meant nothing.
Yeah the only people who give half a shit about your college grades are grad school and/or financial aid.
Foolish and pointless honesty? It looks like I'll have to share the epilogue to the story, then.
I chose RIT over all other engineering colleges for one sole reason: they offered classes in Japanese, which I wanted to minor in. And I did, for the first few years of school. But during my last year, my class schedule became too busy, and I was forced to either take an extra term of school or drop my minor. So I stopped taking Japanese classes.
After I received my F, I needed to find another course to use as a professional elective. I can't remember anything about the course I signed up for, only that on the first day of classes, the professor emailed to say that I didn't meet the prereqs for it and needed to find something else. I began desperately looking through course lists to find something that would qualify for a professional elective and fit into my already tight schedule. No luck. While I was going through the lists, I decided to check the Japanese classes. It was nothing more than idle curiosity; I was certain my schedule couldn't fit it in or the class would be full, and I'd have too much work that term anyway. Against all logic and reason, it was a perfect match to my schedule, and had exactly one opening left. It was mocking me.
Since I was unable to find a course on my own, I asked the Computer Engineering office for assistance, and their response was to just send me a list of professional electives. Wonderful. But as I perused the list, I saw a familiar name. A Computer Graphics course that I'd taken last year as a free elective actually qualified as a professional one. So now I no longer needed a professional elective, I just needed a free elective. And lucky me, I knew of a class with an open slot that worked with my schedule...
If I had passed my VHDL course, I never would've been looking through course schedules, and I never would have considered the possibility of continuing my minor. It is only because I failed that I received a second chance. And that was the only consequence of that F. I didn't lose my scholarship. I didn't have to stay an extra term. I didn't have any trouble finding a job after I graduated. I stuck to my ideals at a time when I had every reason not to, and it brought me nothing but happiness. Failing that course is one of the proudest moments of my life, and I'm very glad that the course wasn't just another easy A.
I wasn't the first one finished, but I was almost the first one, which is slightly unusual for me (except the two-minute test above).
But since I wasn't the first one done, I shrugged it off, turned it in, and left.
The next week I got the test back with a frickin' rant from the professor written all over it in red ink, about my dishonesty as a student and about integrity and how I forced him into a spot where he was required to give me full credit and blah blah blah. It was paragraphs long.
I went to meet him after class, and we quickly and politely established the following things: 1) I had no way of knowing that my test was only half the test, 2) If he thought I was trying to get away with something, he shouldn't let me get away with it, 3) I fucking aced the shit out of the questions that I did answer, 4) I was probably the best student in the class, and 5) I was willing to take the test again any time, even right then and there. He let it go and left my grade at a 97%.
Then, uh...what does matter?
Would like to establish priorities, and all.
Beyond needing a certain average to remain in some programs, your grades don't matter a whole lot - unless, as mentioned before, you want to continue with grad school or something.
What a buffoon.
Highschool math went in a straight line, Algebra, Geometry, Algebra 2, Pre-Calc, Calc. Algebra you could take in 8th grade and skip straight to Geometry, which I did. Geometry was easy, just stayed in back playing with my graphing calculator, averaged a B. Algebra 2 was different. The classes were split between an upperclassmen class and a lowerclassmen class. The lower classmen classes were full so I got put into the upper classmen. Me a sophmore in a class with mostly all Seniors should have been fun. Should have. I literally slept through every single class, never looked at the text book, and never did any homework. The only thing the teacher graded was the tests. No work was required to be shown, so I didn't show any. I finished them in an average of 7 to 10 minutes with the longest taking 15 and the shortest taking 3. Not sure how I did it, but I did. By the end of the class, the teacher was acusing me of cheating, in an effort to prove him wrong I sat next to his desk and did the last 3 tests. I didn't have any programs or anything in my calculator (which he actually allowed anyways). I was able to remember which steps I did in the problems he gave, along with the answer to the variables (multi unknown variable problems with only the final variable being the answer to the question). Did theses tests inabout 10 minutes each, teacher was furious but forced to give me the A due to his grading criteria. But due to me being the young one, the seniors in the class ended up being rather unfriendly with me as I made fools of them as they took all period to finish the class.
That same year, my english teacher didn't like me, and I didn't like her. She would give me lower grades than what I should have because she didn't like the topics I wrote about. I couldn't remember what the topics were, but the papers were usually grammatically correct and spelling was usually correct. She just didn't like the paper so she gave a bad grade. My parents got into it with the school, but they wouldn't change anything for a reason I can't remember. So, for one of the last grades for the class we had to do a 15 to 17 minute presentation, every 5 seconds under or above were a point off the final score. But if you hit the middle, 16 minutes, exactly you arebe giving an automatic 50% credit. We were allowed to use what ever visual aids we wanted to use (movies, pictures, slides). I was trying hard, but by about a week before I was to speak, I went "fuck it"
I put together a 16 minute movie. The first 30 seconds or so was me saying "I don't like you, Mrs. whatsherface. You don't like me. Lets watch people getting shot" followed by 15 minutes of people being shot in movies. Can't remember any of the scenes I used, but I know a couple were rather gory. After the 15 minutes, there was me saying "And thats my presentation" Followed by a middle finger. For this presentation I just walked up to the front, put the movie in and sat at my desk. The presentation started as soon as I said a word, or pushed play on the VCR, to the moment I sat back down after turning the movie off. The total presentation time was 16 minutes exactly. She "forgot" to stop the stop watch right away and so my official time was 16 minutes and 10 seconds.
Needless to say, I got a F on the presentation and course and did a summer english class and got myself an A, but I'm not sure how.
The next year, my Junior year, we had a project in English called "The Magazine Project". Essentially, you are giving a certain amount of fake money, and you had to produce a magazine. You could write articles for other student's magazines for fake money and buy articles for your magazine. You can also write your own articles for your magazine, but you had to buy a total of 7 articles. You needed a total of 21 articles in the magazine. An article was ANYTHING written by you or a classmate that the teacher deemed tasteful and agreed on. Could be something you wrote when 6, could be something you wrote yesterday, it didn't matter. Your magazine also had to have a theme and follow it as well. This project took the last month of class as it was actually half your grade and was set up by the entire english department so the entire Junior class was doing it.
I did bare minimum as I didn't like the subject, and was still jaded from the previous year. Didn't read any of the books we were to read but managed to get average C on the tests. I didn't do any of the written assignments since they weren't graded, but from the beginning of the year we were told of the magazine project and were told what we had to do for it, so the written assignments were supposed to provide content for said magazine. Well, come magazine time, I sat in class just reading what ever book I was reading at the time, not doing any work. Come presentation time, I went to class, got myself attended, then slipped out the door and just sorta left for the day. Did that for the last week of class as each day we toured the other classes to see their magazines.
If you couldn't tell, I didn't do it. Not one bit. Didn't write anything. Absolutely nothing. By that point I just didn't care.
I get my report card in the mail a couple weeks after class ends, ready to explain the F in english again, but to my surprise I got a B. Before the Magazine Project I was a C student. The project was half the grade and I didn't do any part of it and managed to increase the grade to a B. I was flabbergasted, my parents were happy, and I just couldn't think of the words to even begin to understand how it happened. I still don't know how it happened, 5 years later.
Duh.
People in authority project their failures on those their mistakes impinge on all the time. Nothing new at all.
Divination? Balderdash. He should have noticed the other page when he was copying off the other students' papers.
I'd probably have felt guiltier about it if the whole class hadn't done it. I had a strong suspicion, as well, that the teacher knew we were all cheating and just didn't much care.
Other than that, there's been the occasional lab where we had to run an experiment 5 times, and after 3 or 4 getting nigh-identical results, I just made up the rest.
Learning new things?
Developing marketable skills?
Growing as a person?
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Getting laid.
Xbox Live Gamertag: Suplex86
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
My teacher gave me a 50, saying that I obviously just wanted to cause trouble. I told her that more trouble would probably be caused if an essay about a black person failed on the principle that the character wasn't on an all-white list to choose from. (This teacher already had some problems with race, but thats another story).
Strangly, the next day my grade was a 95, written over a whited out 50.
In retrospect, I was probably a dick about it, but that teacher was fired later in the year for calling a black student a racial slur where she thought no one could hear her.
However, one adventure that I was proud of was during an application to a Theatrical Production program at a local university. As a part of it, we were shown clips of various movies and asked questions about composition and whatnot. One of the final questions asked about a picture that was included, and for us to write a short story about it.
It was a black and white photo of a city street. People walking on the sidewalk, trees, houses, a few cars, etc.
I decided to write my story from the perspective of one of the lamp posts.
I wove a tale regarding it's existance, getting to know the frequent inhabitants of the street, seeing and hearing their woes and small victories from it's regular perch, and the other objects commonly around. The tale ended with her (I believe I alluded to it being female) realizing that in the early morning, another post had been damaged by a road accident, and had to be taken away. I felt it was one of the more creative things I'd ever written, but sadly I wasn't accepted.
One of the funniest moments was when one my friends handed in an essay written entirly on post-it notes to the strictest teacher in the school.
In a philosophy exam I got a question asking what jobs shouldn't a christian take. Unfortuantly I hated that class as it was described as 'Philosophy and Ethics' but it was just advanced Religous Studies, all about christians. As I'm an atheist and wanted to know about philosphers this kind of pissed me off. I didn't learn any of the Bible quotes we were supposed to learn. using the 10 commandments I thought up as many careers possible. Christians would not become idol makers etc. Got an A.
In the same class we had to produce a presentation on death and the afterlife (Christain views of course). I managed to persuade my friends to do it through the medium of sock puppets. My teacher didn't know whether to laugh or cry
*enters room*
Some guy: Man, thats kinda hard.
Me: What is?
Teacher: The final, a 4 page paper on the most infulental person of the 20th century.
Me: Dibs on Hitler
Teacher: Nick has dibs.
Me: Can I also do Hitler and just make his paper look horrible by comparison?
Teacher:No.
Me: Can I proclaim myself as the most influental person?
Teacher:If you want to fail.
We had like, 4 weeks to do this. So every day in class was spent in the computer lab for research/writing. 2 weeks into this, im still randomly searching google for inspiration to the most influential person of the 20th century. Other than Hitler. The teacher had been bugging me for two weeks about it, as I had essential gotten 0 work done.
By Wednesday of Week 3, he walks up behind me.
Teacher: Pick someone.
Me: I was planning to
Teacher: No, you've just sat here doing nothing, pick someone now.
Me:... Fine. I picked someone.
Teacher: Who?
Me:I dont know his name. Its David something. He founded the SAS
Teacher: You're making this up
Me: Really? Cause im betting my final grade and a 5 page paper that I'm not.
Teacher: Whatever. Its due Monday
Come Monday I had a beautiful 5-1/2 page paper on Sir David Stirling, founder of the British 22nd Special Air Service, one of the first modern special operations and counter terrorism units. Forerunners to GSG9, Delta Force, Australian SAS, and the modern SWAT team. A couple pages describing Stirling's life, his creation of the unit, how the unit changed things, and how basically every Hostage Rescue thats ever been completed can be in some way based off of tactics or equipment designed by The SAS.
I got an A+ and an apology.
Ironically, the ONE time I actually do something the way I'm supposed to (as in, research for months/weeks on end, meticulously get every detail I can find and make sure my citations are perfect, it was one of those term papers worth half of the final mark) is the one time I get accused of cheating and plagiarism.
I spend a few weeks wondering, nervously, if I forgot to put something in the bibliography, or if I subconciously copied something else a la "I wish I was taller", or oh shit that passage from the Chaucer poem wasn't cited.
As it turned out, my writing was apparently too good. Apparently the professor went to one of his friends in the english department and they apparently agreed that this writing couldn't have come from my hands.
I spend a half hour explaining my case and whatnot, telling him to go talk to the english professor I've been taking for two of the past three semesters, and even give him some other work. He finally relents on the charge of plagiarism.
I ask if he's going to review the score I got.
"No, it's not quite what I wanted."
I still got the 0, and failed the damned class.
Fucker.
The seminar where I had to explain my project my class though?
Well, I'd been up for 3 days straight just using proplus. I'd had college for those three days, then went and worked 9 hour shifts after all of them. I was, in short, a complete fucking mess.
I make my presentation in Apple Keynote the night before - I decide that I don't really have any way of using my content, so I'll wow everybody with style and some nicely edited Quicktime movies, including some hand captured Halo footage (to show AI) that took me about 3 hours to get. The presentation is beautiful, and I know that I'm the only person in my class that could do something like this*
Get into college the day of my presentation. Have exported my Keynote files as both Quicktime Interactive and Powerpoint files to cover all my bases. I have about twenty minutes before I'm due, so I decide to do a test run.
Disaster. The college doesn't have QT installed on many of it's computers, and those it does are all in the design dept**. TRo top it off, none of them are powerful enough to handle a 1024*768 video file. I fallback to my PPT copy.
Another disaster. All my fancy transitions have been lost, as have all my fancy shadowing and transparency effects. I've also lost all my video clips, so alot of my slides are plain black. No time to fix it properly, I delete the empty slides and stick in pictures culled from GIS where needed. The presentation is by this point a complete eyesore.
So finally I arrive on stage in front of about 100 of my peers. My presentation is shit and contains no content. I can barely stand, let alone speak coherently. So I start. Every single slide, I quickly read off what it says to the letter, then go off on a rant about what's missing - video footage, pictures etc. And I swear about it.
"Blah blah blah AI. Look, this is shit. It wasn't meant to be like this. What is this wank?"
"It's just crap! Oh, that bit loaded alright. Big fucking deal WHERE THE FUCK IS MY VIDEO FOOTAGE? I SPENT FUCKING HOURS DOING THAT!"
In the end I was just clicking through my slides without reading them just uttering the word "shit" very loudly at each one. My girlfriend had to come and drag me off the stage and out of the hall.
I didn't pass. Got pretty good marks overall though.
*The rest of my class could barelyt use PowerPoint, let alone own their own video capture equipment
**The art & design students hate the science and tech students. We return the favour.
AHHHH The guy on the left looks like my Husband! (I know its not, he was not in school when that movie came out)
Dude, did you have Mr. Plough?
For a substantial (10 point) bonus to our final test score, we were instructed in my physical science class to construct a paper airplane, and the one that flew the farthest would win the prize. Now, this class was full of nerds (mostly part of my D&D crew) so as you can imagine, there was a torrential flood of wind checking, paper measuring, etc.
I'm no good at science, my forte is language. I knew I had very little chance, plus I have never been able to build a paper airplane in my life. So I stared at the question for a good ten minutes.
"For an extra ten points, you are to build a flying machine out of paper and whatever supplies you need to construct it The one that travels the farthest distance wins."
An idea forms.
So we all go outside, and the flying begins. I sort of stand in the back, waiting. Eventually everyone has gone but me, so I walk to the starting line. I pull a piece of paper from my folder, wad it around a rock, and throw it. Obviously, it travels a bit farther than the others.
Silence. Everyone sort of looks at me, then at the teacher, then at me again. This instructor had a reputation of being sort of a jerk, but in the way that he wanted to make you think instead of repeat facts. He just smiled and told me I won.
I think the rest of the class was a little pissed after that, but hey, it was the last week anyway.
:^: