In what was later described by the professor as, “The most comprehensive collective failure of knowledge acquisition and retention by a group of organisms more evolved than the archaea Candidatus Huberarchaeum,” twenty-five students managed to absolutely obliterate a test last week to such an extent no one involved is still on track to graduate. In fact, the professor was later seen in his office on Workday checking that his degree is still valid. But, was it really all the professor’s fault? We scored some interviews to get to the bottom of it.
“It was supposed to be open book! Every semester in the past this class’s tests were open book. But not this semester. Of course it was a disaster!” said Alfred, generally accepted as the class’s smart person, the one everyone else went to for advice. “It was always so easy to get the exam from last semester and copy the answers cause he used the same test every year.” Whether or not that procedure was up to the highest standards of academic integrity is of no real concern to Off the Press given our propensity for “not” encouraging people to cheat. But we always appreciated and gave great reviews to professors who made their answers easy to find. We also give bad reviews to professors who made hard tests.
“Honestly I’m not sure what the big deal was. I had as much of a clue as anyone else, which was technically an upgrade for me,” said Robert, generally regarded as the guy no one wants in their group for the grade, but everyone wants for the memes. “Even if it had been open book, I’m not sure I would have found anything useful in it. Actually, I didn’t know there was a textbook for this class.” We got a copy of the textbook Advanced Principles of Engineering Fundamentals for Electric, Chemical, Mechanical, Computational, and Medical Applications in Modern Industry Settings: A General Overview but even the little introduction, where the authors attempt to demonstrate wit, contained calculus symbols, so we quickly closed it. It didn’t seem like it would help, mainly because it didn’t have a built-in ctrl + f function.
The professor’s office was a madhouse when we got there for the interview. Red pens that had run out of ink littered the floor, his diploma was hanging crooked on the wall, and a bookshelf was empty, but its contents could be found in various states of openness on his desk. In other words, the office of a typical professor in charge of teaching, research, departmental functions, and navigating the administration. “I don’t understand. All the questions were taken right from the practice tests on canvas. I don’t want to fail everyone, but mathematically, there’s no other option…did they even study?”
We felt too bad for this poor man to tell him that no, his students definitely did not study and that they had signed up for the class assuming the tests would be open book.
This, of course, is not a unique instance this year. In many rooms this fall, students have walked into the professor sitting on their desk head down about to deliver a depressing speech. Never before though have the answers to the test been so easy to find beforehand. Never before did every single person become so completely dependent on the textbook that wasn’t even that good anyway. The lesson to be learned here is that canvas slides won’t do it on their own. Well, sometimes they might. But not this time. Study hard folks.
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