The pressure to do well in school can be intense. But test papers are not the only place where students can display intelligence and wit, as two supposedly true stories show.
One, which I first included in the “Bluebook Legends” section of The Mexican Pet
, concerns a student in a very large class who disregards the professor’s direction that everyone stop writing on the final examination immediately when time is called. He writes another minute or so in his exam bluebook and then steps forward to turn in his work. The professor refuses to accept it.
“What will happen to me?” the student asks.
“You’ll fail this class, of course,” the professor replies.
Argument is to no avail; the professor stands fast, while the student pleads and argues. Finally the student asks, “Do you know who I am?”
“No,” says the professor, “and furthermore, I don’t care.”
“Good,” says the student, and he thrusts his bluebook into the middle of the pile of identical test booklets and stalks out of the classroom. (A student from the University of Maryland told this old legend as a true story on
National
Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” on May 19, 1987.)
Chalk up one more for the crafty undergraduate in the ongoing battle of wits between faculty and studentry that passes for education in modern folklore. The story of the nameless student is, of course, apocryphal, but it is often told as having happened recently at one particular college campus or another. It’s not possible to prove that this is just a legend, but the fact that the same story is told in so many locales suggests that it is not really true. Also, I am told, the “Do you know who I am?” trick has been employed in comedy films and TV series in scenes in which a low-ranking military clerk speaks anonymously to a superior officer on the telephone: “Do you know who I am, General? …. No? …. Good! [click
].”
There is another similar story that also involves a student who is unknown to the professor. This student was taking an ornithology class, for which the final exam counted as half the grade. When the professor handed him his exam, the student was shocked to find that the entire exam was just pictures of birds’ legs, with the directions “Identify each species.” (In a variation, the professor sets up a row of stuffed birds with bags over their bodies so that only their feet show.) The student was furious and stormed up to the front of the class, ripped his paper into little pieces, handed them to the professor, and said, “This is ridiculous!”
The professor shouted back, “You can’t do that!”
And the student returned, “I sure as hell can!”
The professor then screamed, “Then you’re going to fail this class. What’s your name, anyway?” And he pulled out his grade book to note down the offender’s fate.
The student then pulled up his right pants leg to the knee and said, “you tell me, Prof.”