My last semester of college, I took a tele-course for some stupid art history requirement and when I say "took" I mean signed up for. No offense to
Austrialian Megs the art history master, but this class was dumb. At least, I think it was, though how the freak do I know bc I never went.
It was one of those courses you supposedly watch on TV but (shocking, I know) I never did. Ever. It was on public television at something ridiculous like 10 PM on Fridays, and we didn't even have channels at our apartment (seriously...we had a TV but just for movies, make sense?). You could check videos out from the library which I always planned on doing to catch up but it just never happened. I'm a pretty good student most of the time but this was a glaring exception and you know how the less you do, the less you want to do? Yep. So, when I got an email telling me it was time for the open-book midterm I figured, "Uh oh, better pull something out." I hadn't thought
AT ALL about the class...in fact, I didn't even own the book. The morning of the midterm, I went to the library thinking I'd check the book out and fake it.
Of course, the book was checked out.
I scurried to the bookstore to buy it (20 minutes before the exam) and OF COURSE, they don't have it. So what do I do? Why, what any self-respecting BSer would do...I show up to take the open book exam sans book and WITHOUT ONE RELEVANT PIECE OF INFORMATION IN MY BRAIN.
I walked in a little shy bc I didn't know if the man standing there was a proctor or actually the teacher, since I'd never watched the class. And then I just made stuff up. I got an email a few weeks later saying I could pick up my midterm, but I was scared to go, so never found out what I got on the exam. Naturally, I swore I'd salvage in time for the final.
(In my defense I'll say that in my other classes, I was attending, doing well, "learning," etc.; this one was uniquely impossible for me to feel motivated to do anything for. I promise I have a brain and, minus several glaring exceptions, am a responsible, reasonably good student).Well, the final rolled around, and I still hadn't purchased the book,and I still hadn't watched a single class period. Luckily he emailed a "study guide" pdf out that looked like it was from the 1950s, Xeroxed or something so it looked all old-fashioned and smudgy. So I showed up armed with that.
45 minutes late.
All the doors were locked so I had wandered around the building for a while and finally got in, sat down, realized I had been really, really, really awful about this whole thing and just hoped for a miracle. I was about to graduate and just kept thinking, "Well, it's a general requirement, so if I get a C- or better I'm fine. Visualize a C. Visualize a C," and just started word-vomiting on the page. Good, old-fashioned make shiz up type word vomiting from someone startlingly unprepared for absolutely no good reason.
What did I get?
An A-.
Well, tomorrow morning I have an eerily similar situation and as Jennifer says, I'm alternating between panic and apathy. I'm just banking on the planet sending me the gift of bullshit. Though I have a sinking feeling United States bankruptcy code may be slightly more difficult to pretend on than the History of Art in Utah.
However, at the risk of sounding like TAMN, it's not my fault this guy made class too mind-numbingly boring to attend. In the words of the illustrious Rachel Williams, may I say, "Passing finals this year will be a Christmas miracle."
Here goes nothing.
