| | I love when questions are vague like this. Whenever I run across a puzzle that says, "What is the next number in this sequence?" I always reply, "42! And I even have a polynomial equation to prove it!" (For those non-math geeks, you can use polynomial equations to generate a formula that will give any number you choose as the next one in sequence.)
This "college test" story reminds me of two other stories:
• A teacher gave 45 minutes for the day's test, and told his students that anyone who continued writing after time was up would automatically flunk. The test began, with the students working through the tests as you would expect. After 45 minutes, the teacher said, "Stop!" All but one student stopped. That one student took about another minute, while everyone else's test was already in a pile on the teacher's desk.
Finally, the student finished writing, closed his book, and brought it up to the teacher. Before the student even got near the desk, the teacher said, "Don't bother. You've already flunked the test! You continued writing after the 45 minutes were up and I said, 'Stop', which I warned you was an automatic flunking of this test."
The student seemed shocked, and said, "You're flunking ME? Are you sure you really want to flunk ME? Don't you realize who I am?" The teacher, unimpressed, replied, "No." The student replied, "Good!", and shoved his paper into the middle of the pile!
• One student spent the entire weekend partying, despite having an important biology test on the following Monday, which would weigh heavily on his grade. As he was heading into his biology class for the test, he was worried about the time he wasted.
Sure enough, when the test began, and he saw the questions, he knew he was in trouble. He didn't know any of the answers, and spent the first 5 minutes just trying to think of at least 1 good answer to any of them.
After that failed, he immediately got an inspiration! He began writing a letter to his mother in the blue book, telling his mother how much he missed her, but how hard he was working in college. He also made sure to mention that biology was one of his favorite classes, as the teacher was able to bring the subject alive, and thus made it seem so interesting and easy to learn. He then finished up the letter, and when the test time was up, he handed in this blue book containing the letter.
Immediately after all his classes were over, he went home to go over his text book, and look up the answers from the biology test. He then wrote down, in his own words, the answers to the biology questions in an identical blue book. He then put a stamp on it, and sent it to his mother.
The next time his biology class met, the teacher gave the student back his blue book, mentioning that the only thing in it was a letter to the student's mother. The student feigned confusion, and then said, "I must've sent my test answers off to my mother after class!"
As the student had been so complimentary in his letter to his mother, the teacher simply allowed the student to have his mother send it back directly to the teacher as soon as possible!
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