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College
finals from Hell
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Instructions: Read each question carefully. Answer all
questions.
Time Limit: 4 hours.
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HISTORY
Describe the history of the papacy from its origins
to the present day, concentrating especially, but not
exclusively, on its social, political, economic, religious,
and philosophical impact on Europe, Asia, America, and
Africa. Be brief, concise, and specific.
MEDICINE
You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of
gauze, and a bottle of Scotch. Remove your appendix.
Do not suture until your work has been inspected. You
have 15 minutes.
PUBLIC SPEAKING
Twenty-five hundred riot-crazed aborigines are storming
the classroom. Calm them. You may use any ancient language
except Latin or Greek.
BIOLOGY
Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent
human culture if this form of life had developed 500
million years earlier, with special attention to its
probable effect on the English parliamentary system.
Prove your thesis.
MUSIC
Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate and perform it with
flute and drum. You will find a piano under your seat.
PSYCHOLOGY
Based on your degree of knowledge of their works, evaluate
the emotional stability, degree of adjustment, and repressed
frustrations of each of the following: Alexander of
Aphrodisias, Rameses II, Gregory of Nicea, Hammurabi.
Support your evaluations with quotations from each man's
work, making appropriate references. It is not necessary
to translate.
SOCIOLOGY
Estimate the sociological problems which might accompany
the end of the world. Construct an experiment to test
your theory.
MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
Define management. Define science. How do they relate?
Why? Create a generalized algorithm to optimize all
managerial decisions. Assuming an 1130 CPU supporting
50 terminals, each terminal to activate your algorithm;
design the communications interface and all necessary
control programs.
ENGINEERING
The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle have
been placed in a box on your desk. You will also find
an instruction manual, printed in Swahili. In ten minutes
a hungry Bengal tiger will be admitted to the room.
Take whatever action you feel is appropriate. Be prepared
to justify your decision.
ECONOMICS
Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national
debt. Trace the possible effects of your plan in the
following areas: Cubism, the Donatist controversy, the
wave theory of light. Outline a method for preventing
these effects. Criticize this method from all possible
points of view. Point out the deficiencies in your point
of view, as demonstrated in your answer to the last
question.
POLITICAL
SCIENCE
There is a red telephone on the desk beside you. Start
World War III. Report at length on its socio-political
effects, if any.
EPISTEMOLOGY
Take a position for or against truth. Prove the validity
of your position.
PHYSICS
Explain the nature of matter. Include in your answer
an evaluation of the impact of the development of mathematics
on science.
PHILOSOPHY
Sketch the development of human thought; estimate its
significance. Compare with the development of any other
kind of thought.
GENERAL
KNOWLEDGE
Describe in detail. Be objective and specific.
***
EXTRA CREDIT ***
Define the universe; give three examples.
How
Not to Be a Successful College Student
1. Consistently arrive late for class. Make a big disruption
when you come in--slam the door, climb over people to
get a remote seat, drop your backpack loudly, shuffle
books and papers around, and pop open a soda can.
2. hen, slouch in your seat, flirt with other students,
stare at the ceiling, put your feet up on the seat in
front of you, and snap gum. Never look the professor
in the eye or bother to take notes. Better still, sit
with a friend so you can chat and giggle during the
lecture. Eat lunch--preferably something crunchy and
something with a strong odor. Yawn loudly. Fall asleep.
Do work for other classes. Begin packing up your things
before class is over. Get up and leave while the professor
is still talking.
3. During lectures, women should check their hair and
paint their nails. Men should wear sunglasses or baseball
caps to hide their eyes, lounge in their seats with
arms and legs spread widely, act bored, and never appear
to have any interest in the lecture material. The most
important thing is to look cool.
4. Never ask questions or offer answers to the professor's
questions.
5. Waste class time by asking lots of irrelevant questions,
using personal anecdotes and rambling digressions whenever
possible.
5. Chronically argue with the professor. Try to point
out every possible gap or weakness in the lecture material
to demonstrate how infinitely clever you are. Be unwilling
to concede the validity of other viewpoints and be intolerant
of people whose opinions differ from your own. Never
try to understand a topic from different perspectives,
and never question your own assumptions.
6. Don't bother opening the textbook. If you're really
determined not to be successful, don't bother buying
the textbook. Alternatively, you can buy the textbook
and bring it with you to every class, but never open
it for any reason. This way, it will be in pristine
condition when you try to sell it back to the bookstore
as a used book.
7. Under no circumstance should you ever read anything
a second time!
8. Wait until the day before an exam to approach the
professor for help. Insist on being seen immediately,
without an appointment. They love it when students who
never come to class suddenly show up at their office
before the exam and expect a private tutoring session
that summarizes all the lecture material since the start
of the semester.
10. Wait until the day before an assignment is due to
work on it. If you can't finish in time, just approach
the professor and whine about unfair deadlines, your
busy schedule, and your distracting roommate. Always
expect to be given special treatment.
11. Never take any initiative. Don't turn to your textbooks
or supplementary readings for answers or clarifications.
It is unthinkable for you to go to the library and find
additional sources of information to clarify difficult
or confusing material.
12. Suggested reading" should be completely ignored.
"Required reading" is optional. If it's important,
the professor will mention it in class. Since you won't
be going to class much, find the biggest nerd there
and arrange to borrow his or her notes.
13. Never take notes of your own. Expect to be able
to borrow other people's notes, or look for note-taking
services that will sell you a copy of the lecture notes.
Failing that, have the balls to ask the professor or
teaching assistant to show you their own notes.
14. Be a classroom attorney. Try to negotiate the course
requirements, bend the rules, and find loopholes. Try
to squeeze out special treatment for yourself. Find
weak excuses for having to take exams at different times
from the rest of the class. Any disability, unfortunate
incident, personal problem, minority status, or disadvantage
gives you carte blanche to miss all deadlines and expect
lengthy extensions.
15. Even though you knew since the first day of class
that a Term paper was due on the last day, ask for an
extension because (insert weak excuse here--see above).
16. Miss class, then ask the professor if "anything
important" was covered. Expect a full summary of
the lecture to be provided on demand.
17. When you don't understand something, first ask if
it will be on the exam. If it won't be, you just saved
yourself a lot of trouble.
18. Act as if you are attending college against your
will, and consider it a big inconvenience. Think of
classes as an unpleasant obligation, not a service that
you requested and paid for.
19. Complain about the workload. Expect to get acceptable
grades with minimal work. Don't be tricked into thinking
that getting good grades requires any effort on your
part.
20. Make athletic activities your first priority. Expect
that your professors will agree that athletic obligations
take precedence over academic ones.
21Choose classes based on the convenience of their meeting
time. Never take a class that meets before 11am or after
1pm.
22. Turn in papers filled with misspelled words, grammatical
errors, and unstandard format. Argue that the content
is what matters, not the style. As long as the facts
are right, who cares if it's incomprehensible writing?
Never take the time or trouble to look up a spelling,
grammar, or style question.
23. Turn in your papers unstapled. Loose pages are fine,
especially when they aren't numbered in any way.
24. Only write your last name on exams, especially on
those computer-scanned answer sheets. It's such a bother
to fill in all those bubbles, and what's the chance
that there's another student named Smith in the class,
anyway?
25. The only thing you should care about is getting
acceptable grades with minimal work. Never do work that
won't affect your grade. Find shortcuts to assignments.
Only read the chapter summaries in your textbook. Try
to resubmit papers from old classes for new assignments.
Study only the material that will be on the test.
26. When you write a paper, find out the minimum acceptable
length and write no more than that. Find out the minimum
acceptable number of references, and use no more than
that. Use only the most convenient references possible.
For example, the course textbook should always be one
of those references, since you already have to read
it anyway. Your daily newspaper or People magazine may
have articles that are indirectly related to your paper
topic--cite them, and that can be a reference. Don't
bother going to the library--just browse the Web and
use whatever comes up from a Lycos search as reference
material.
27. Remember that your part-time job is more important
than study time. Nobody ever got paid for studying.
28. Above all else, do whatever you can to cheat the
system. After all, you've already handed over tens of
thousands of dollars to your college. What more do they
want from you?
The
Best College Entrance Essay
This is an actual essay written by a college applicant.
The author, Hugh Gallagher, now attends NYU.
3A. ESSAY: IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR
COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE APPLICANT, BETTER, WE
ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: ARE THERE
ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS
YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS
A PERSON?
I
am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing
ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on
my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area
of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban
refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time
efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days
in a row.
I
woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing,
I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging
speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes.
I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an
outlaw in Peru.
Using
only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly
defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a
horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello,
I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous
documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension
bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays,
after school, I repair electrical appliances free of
charge.
I
am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless
bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line
of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private
citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller
number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer
I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force
demonstration. I bat .400. My deft floral arrangements
have earned me fame in international botany circles.
Children trust me.
I
can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with
deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick,
and David Copperfield in one day and still had time
to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know
the exact location of every food item in the supermarket.
I have performed several covert operations for the CIA.
I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair.
While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated
with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery.
The laws of physics do not apply to me.
I
balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are
all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate
in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the
meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have
made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli
and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have
won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions
in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have
played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery,
and I have spoken with Elvis.
But
I have not yet gone to college.
Top
ten Reasons Why College is like preschool...
1.
You cry for your mother.
2. You cross the street without looking for cars.
3.
Snack time is a necessity.
4.
You bundle up for the outdoors without caring what you
look like (because everyone else looks as stupid as
you do).
5.
You stay at home and play games with your friends.
6.
You wear your backpack on both shoulders.
7.
You wear big mittens.
8.
Playing in the snow is a legitimate activity.
9.
You take naps.
10.
You look forward to grilled cheese sandwiches.
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