Passing This Test Is A Real Odyssey

To preface this, I am a nerdy person. I got good grades and studied hard, I read a ton, and I generally like to know things — oh, yes, and I drink, too.

In my high school, in-school college classes were popular to take because, hey, free credits. One of the classes was college composition. It was basically a writing class that taught how to write good essays, not s***ty five-paragraph format that any professor would fail immediately. About a third of my entire class was in it, so a little more than 30 kids. 

The first assignments we got involved reading Homer’s Odyssey and The Iliad, as well as The Aeneid and Dante’s Inferno. Obviously, that’s a lot, but the teacher was super thorough with notes and helping us break down language for the eventual super test that was going to have all of this nonsense on it. 

During my time in Comp I noticed that a large group of the students, juniors at this point, were having more fun hiding the fact that they were on their phones. I didn’t think much of this since it was pretty normal. 

Well, the test came around, worth about 250 points, and I got about 230. Not bad, I thought, but I didn’t realize the twist. 

You see, I was one of seven people in a class of 36 that passed and not because the test was hard. Questions were like, “Why are the first seven chapters of The Odyssey referred to as ‘the Telemachy’?” Answer, “Because they are about Telemachus.” That’s it. If you paid attention and took decent notes you were fine. 

In an effort to not have everyone fail, my teacher decided to weigh the grade to 140, so darn, all that hard work for nothing, right? 

Nope! I got my progress report and I had over 200 percent. She gave the extra points as extra credit for the students that passed. Suffice it to say, I didn’t have to write four papers because of this. She explicitly told me and the others who passed not to, as they were only to bring other grades up since even with her curve fifteen people still failed. 

Moral: if you’re taking a college class for free with the intention to go to college, you should probably listen.