Editor's note: This article is a satire piece. It is not to be taken literally. 'Carson' is a pen name.
Dear Carson,
I'm f***ed. I have three finals coming up in two weeks, and I can pretty much guarantee I'm going to fail them all. As an English major, I've always been really good at bullshitting my way through papers and getting a decent participation grade in class. It's gotten me all As and Bs up to this point without having to do much reading or work at all. For whatever reason, the only semester I've had to take any finals is this one, and now I've got three that I'm totally unprepared for. All of them will have text-specific, short-answer questions. There will be no way of answering the questions without having read the assigned texts. I haven't read anything. I guess I can use SparkNotes, but I know that's not enough. Help me, or else my dad will probably kill me when he finds out about my GPA.
Sincerely,
2 kool 4 skool
Dear 2 kool,
It does seem like you're f***ed, but you're dealing with a pro in the art of deception and overcoming academic obstacles. Let's just say I had to skip a lot of classes to make it to where I am today. I agree that SparkNotes isn't a very good option. It is a tool best used in preparation for class discussion on broad, overarching themes within an entire text - not for the specifics. Every major has its ways of cheating: Engineers have the solutions manual for the homework in every class they take (particularly helpful in statics), business majors have somebody take the test for them and English majors have their own methods. You could sleep with your professor (although chances are, you won't manage to bag all three of them), try to write as much information as you can on your thigh in pen so that you can secretly lift up your shorts during the test to read the answers or you could use websites like SparkNotes to help. But as we pretty much concluded, you need something bigger and better than that.
So here it is, your only option: Talk to one of your friends in the theater department. Borrow a costume that will make you look like an intellectual, old professor. I assume your English professor's office is in Clemens Hall, so go there late at night fully dressed in your costume. Look for a janitor and tell them that you are professor "so-and-so" and inform them you're locked out of your office. Ask the janitor politely to open the office for you, and then find a copy of the final exam. Either copy it or take it with you if there are multiple copies. Be swift and be stealthy, my friend. Good luck!
