Last week, Stevens announced a new humanity class P-101, Intro to Paradoxes and Problems, which is open for registration to all students and will be taught by external experts. However, the course was opened after the registration deadline, leaving many interested students in the bowels of the Registrar’s office. We here at Off The Press took a moment out of each of our hourly staff meetings on Mondays to think of them and wish them well.
The class was its own prerequisite on Workday, creating a catch-22 for everyone trying to register. According to the course coordinator, this registration process is the first of the class assignments which will focus on getting students to resolve paradoxes and catch mistakes and flaws in other solutions. While we respect the commitment to the spirit of the course, Off The Press does not condone forced visits to the Office of the Registrar or any of the other administrative departments, a complete list of which can be found on our website.
The course was sold to Stevens by a traveling salesman who had missed his train to the next algorithmically determined optimal location (Rutgers), and was so desperate for clients that he had rented billboards to catch the attention of potentially interested universities. The course will meet three times a week with exams on the 31st of September and November. The actual start day of the course will be a surprise for enrolled students until the day it starts, when the aforementioned salesman will inform each student. This confused some students who, familiar with the unexpected hanging paradox, were unsure how it could possibly be a surprise. We predict the salesman will show up on Wednesday, surprising the students and fulfilling the paradox. Unfortunately, Wednesday is Opposite Day, and the statement “today is Opposite Day” is never true.
Quite honestly though, we at Off The Press think the students will do just fine in this class. As everything that happens in the universe is predetermined by the arrangement of atoms at the Big Bang and we are now just playing out a long set of chemical reactions, the success or failure of each student in this course is unchangeable. This confused one interested student we talked to who said, “I’m not sure if I’ll do it, I’ll decide soon though,” implying that they do have free will.
We advised the student to time travel into the future and ask his future self what he would do. Upon returning from his excursion three months from now, the student said his future self had taken the course and hated it, so he decided it would not be a good idea to register. After making this statement, a void opened up in the space-time continuum and sucked the student in. He has not been seen since.
All this talk of paradoxes and difficult situations has reminded me that Off Center, the sketch and improv comedy division of Off The Press is hosting their first sketch show of the semester Catch 23: We Caught Another One tonight, September 24, at 9 p.m. and tomorrow, September 25, at 8 p.m. in Burchard 118, and would probably appreciate it if you came. We promise there’s no paradoxes to resolve at the show.
Off The Press is a satirical Opinion column written and organized by Off Center, often used to joke about current Stevens issues and campus news. It is currently organized by Off Center President, Matthew Brantl.
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