warn your grandparents – it’s test time

this article is great. it’s a fun statistical paper on the likelihood of a students’ grandparents “dying” around test time. it would appear from the above graph that your grandparents’ health during finals and midterms is directly related to how good your grades are. if you have bad grades your grandparents are fine until testing time but then they better watch out. of course, the grief will cause you to miss several days of school and therefore need to postpone or simply miss your finals.

my favorite part of the article is the series of possible solutions that the author gives for protecting students’ grandparents. they are:

1. stop giving exams. at first glance, this seems to be the simplest answer to the problem. like many simplistic solutions, however, it fails to consider the full ramifications of such a course. without exam results, all medical schools would be forced to close their doors, having no way of distinguishing worthy students. the resultant dearth of physicians in the next generation would throw so many other professionals (tax accountants, malpractice attorneys, golf pros, etc.) out of work that the economy would go into a nosedive. regretfully, this solution must be abandoned since it is more dangerous than the original problem.
2. allow only orphans to enroll at universities. this is an extremely attractive idea, except for the shortage of orphans. more could be created of course, but this would be morally wrong, and in any case would replicate the very problem we are trying to avoid i.e. excessive family deaths.
3. have students lie to their families. students must never let any of their relatives know that they are at university. (initial field tests show that keeping just the grandmother ignorant is neither feasible nor safe for the rest of the family.) it is not enough merely to lie about exams; if the family doesn’t know when the exams are, they may then worry constantly and this may lead to even higher death rates. the only solution is that the family must never be aware that the student is even enrolled at a university. students must pretend they are in the armed forces, have joined some religious cult, or have been kidnapped by aliens. all of these alternate explanations for their long absences will keep the family ignorant of the true, dangerous, fact. although it might be argued that such large-scale deceptions could not be maintained for long periods, the success of many politicians suggests otherwise.

so remember when you are studying you aren’t just doing it for good grades. no, your grandparents are depending upon you.

[tags]testing, grades, death, sarcasm, finals, grandparents[/tags]