The auditorium was nearly full, but I managed to find an empty desk at the front. Since it was the first day of class, I hoped the professor wouldn’t keep us too long – with any luck, he’d just hand a syllabus to everyone and then I could get some lunch.
The thought of lunch distracted me to the point where, when the stack of syllabuses was passed around, I accidentally took two. A moment later, I realized what I had done, and I was about to hand them back when I saw that something was wrong. Across the top of one sheet were the words “Christianity 101”, while the other paper said, “Islam 101”.
“Good morning, class,” the professor said. “Let me explain the simple standard of grading I have.”
I glanced at the syllabus of the girl sitting closest to me, and hers said, “Judaism 101”. Was I in the wrong class? The professor was still speaking, though, so I decided to bring up the problem later.
“There is only one term paper,” he said, “but if you want to pass the class, this paper will have to be perfect. Do you understand that? If your reasoning is wrong, or your topic is not sufficiently explored, you will fail. If you misspell a word, or make a grammatical error, or fold a page corner – I really hate folded page corners – you will fail. You will receive an F in the class, and you will be expelled from this college. And I will make it my life’s work to see that any McDonalds which is even thinking of hiring you in the future knows just what a screw-up you are.”
A dead silence filled the auditorium. I didn’t even hear anyone breathe – not that I could have looked away from the professor even if someone had burst into tears. I was still waiting for him to tell us it was a joke when a guy sitting behind me cleared his throat and said nervously, “Uh… sir… if the paper has to be perfect—”
“There’s no if about it.”
“Okay… well, the paper has to be perfect, but I don’t think I ever did a perfect paper in my life.”
Me neither, I thought. I wondered if the professor had ever written a perfect paper himself. Asking him would probably not be such a good idea, though.
“Of course you’ve never done a perfect paper.” The professor stared around at the class, and I tried to look as unobtrusive as I could. “None of you have written the kind of paper that could meet my standards, and none of you ever will.”
But why do your standards have to be so sky-high and impossible to meet? I wondered, just as the professor turned to a student seated in the front row, just before his podium. “My son, however, has always written excellent papers,” he said proudly. “A+ papers, without any of the mistakes that the rest of you would have made. Therefore, he is willing to write your papers for you. I will accept whatever he writes for you, and moreover, I will give those papers passing grades. Just be sure you show him just how grateful you are that he will be putting in all that work on your behalf.” He paused, his eyes narrowing. “I mean it. If he stays up for three days writing a paper, he deserves something good, don't you think? So unless he’s your closest friend in the future, I’ll be very disappointed, and you don’t want me disappointed with you.”
There was another long pause. Finally a girl seated near me raised her hand to chin level. The professor saw it and said, “Yes?”
“Isn’t that cheating?” she said hesitantly. “I mean, for someone else to do the work for us?”
“Yes, it does,” I heard myself say in a rather squeaky voice. I swallowed as the professor looked at me, and continued, “It seems like cheating to me.”
The professor sighed. “How else do you expect to pass the class?”
“By doing the work for myself,” I said. “That’s what I’ve always done.”
He smiled. “But it won’t be completely free of errors, will it?”
“No, but… it’ll be my own work. It’ll stand or fail on its own merits.”
“It has none.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I wasn’t by any means a genius, but I hadn’t done badly in college so far. I’d passed all the courses I’d taken, and many of them had had term papers too, so how could this professor think that my work was so shoddy? I started to say that my papers, while not perfect, were still good, but then I stopped. It might sound like boasting, and it would certainly sound like contradiction of the professor.
“But, sir,” said the guy sitting behind me, “you didn’t address her point. It’s cheating, isn’t it? I mean, I’d rather do the paper for myself than use someone else’s paper to pass.”
“Yes,” I said, feeling emboldened by the knowledge that someone else agreed with me. “I mean, I’m sure your son’s really smart. But I still don’t feel comfortable using his work.”
The professor folded his arms. “How else can you pass the class? I told you, you have to meet my standards.”
“Maybe your standards are a bit high.” I felt myself sweating as I said so, but I’d started this; I couldn’t stop. “I mean, none of my other professors have said that papers were either completely perfect or completely failures.”
“Yeah,” someone else said. “Sounds like a false dichotomy to me.”
The professor sat down at his desk, picking up a pen. “So you’re telling me how to run my class. Let me know your names, please, anyone who thinks he can criticize me – me, a far more educated person than any of you.”
No one said anything. I wondered if he was always so antagonistic. What if I took his son’s paper, but then didn’t want to hang out with the son? Would he go back on his word and fail me?
The pen dropped back on to the desk with a clink and the professor leaned back in his chair. “I take it my standards make sense to the rest of you?” he said, raising his eyebrows.
A girl said cautiously, “If I take the paper your son gives me, will I get an A?”
“A plus. And you won’t have to do any work for it, either. It’ll be his free gift to you.”
She smiled. “I never got an A before. My mom is going to be so happy.”
Happy that you cheated? Suddenly I stood up. “I’m dropping this course,” I said, as I picked up my bookbag from the floor. “And I’m going to get lunch.”
The professor all but leapt to his feet. “What? You’re walking out?”
“That’s right.”
“But you can’t! Religion is a required course!”
“No, it’s not.” If I didn’t have to depend on this dictator, I could speak my mind, and I felt suddenly liberated. “Not for my major. And even if it is, I can wait until someone else is teaching it.”
“I’m always teaching it.”
“Then why isn’t your name on every syllabus?” I picked up a few on the corner desk. “Buddhism 101 – you’re not teaching that. Hinduism 101 – you’re not teaching that either. Maybe I’ll take those instead, if the professors have a grading system that makes sense. Or maybe I’ll just skip the reli—”
“Mine does make sense!” he snapped. “And you have to take my course, with me. You’ll fail if you try to take those other courses. I’ll make sure you fail. I know the Dean—”
“You really don’t like the idea of me walking out,” I said, wishing my stomach wasn’t growling so loudly. “But I’m doing it anyway.” I was half afraid that he would attack me with his pointer as I made my way to the door, but he just stood there, staring at me, and didn’t even say anything like “good riddance” as I opened the door.
I was so busy trying to look back over my shoulder as I walked out that I nearly bumped into a large box outside, labelled “Free Textbooks for Students”. As the door swung shut behind me, I thought I might as well take a look – it was certainly a change for the professor to give out free textbooks. Except that the top layer of books were all different editions. I lifted them out and looked at the second layer of books, which were the same textbook written in different languages, while the last three layers turned out to be books for other courses.
Free gift, free textbooks. You get what you pay for, I thought, and went to have some lunch.