Don’t Go Seeking Answers You Won’t Like

(This is a story that my sociology teacher likes to tell us before we take a test, to help us shake off some stress. We have yet to see proof of whether it’s true or not, but, given some of the idiocy I’ve seen in this school, I wouldn’t be surprised. The students are taking a multiple-choice test, with a sheet in front of them displaying the questions and the answers they can pick from. After the time limit is up, each student swaps tests with someone on the other side of the room and marks the other person’s paper with a green pen as the teacher reads out the right answers. Just after marking, one student lets this gem slip:)

Student: “Hey! The answers were the same letters that were in bold on the sheet!”

(The class goes silent and looks at each other in confusion, then at the sheets they used. None of them have anything highlighted in bold.)

Teacher: “What?”

Student: “Look! On my sheet, question one has A in bold! A was the right answer!”

(The teacher walks over and determines that the student somehow got her hands on the answer key. Normally, the student would have to retake the test another time, and the teacher would mark it before the next lesson so they couldn’t have gotten a result through using the key. However, when getting the student’s test to throw it away, the teacher notices something odd with her grade. To pass and not have to retake it after school, students must get at least 23 out of 30 correct. The student in question got 16, so she would have failed, anyway. The teacher comments on this.)

Teacher: “You had the answer key. Why is your result so low?”

Student: “I just thought the printer had gone funny!”