Back in high school, I had the crotchetiest old Chemistry teacher you've ever seen. Sorta like Ben Stein, except taller, less energetic, and thoroughly jaded by 30+ years of teaching teenagers.

One of his "charming quirks" was how your lab work figured into your grade. Instead of giving you a score that figured into your final grade, he graded your lab reports Sat/Unsat, and if you had more than 1 Unsat lab report, he dropped your final grade by half a letter (e.g. C to C-).

After struggling for 3 hours with my first report only to have it returned to me covered in an ocean's worth of red ink (my spirit snapped like a dry twig somewhere around the third inch-high-and-underlined "NO!!!") I decided that I'd save a couple dozen working hours of fruitless struggle, not turn in another damn lab report at all, and just eat the downgrade.

Which worked out more or less fine.

Why am I telling you this?

Because it's the memory that was conjured after reading this frustrated student's lab report.

It's probably just an Onion-esque urban legend, but I still found it delightful.

And I'm DEFINITELY sympathetic.

[Hat tip to old-high-school-buddy Zaui of This-N-That]

Posted by: Harvey at 03:06 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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