How to Fail an Essay or Short Answer Test
By a Student, Carol Poster
Failing exams is a lot harder than you might think. Administrators don't want you to fail—high "attrition rates" (English translation: student flunking out, dropping out, or spacing out) makes them as individuals and the school as a whole look bad. Professors don't want you to fail—it makes them look bad and creates extra paperwork. If you want to flunk a test, you are on your own. It's a tough and thankless task, but if your heart is set on failing, the guide below lists some foolproof strategies, honed to perfection by thousands of students across North America.
Preparation:
You might not think you need to prepare yourself to fail, but you do. If you show up bright and alert, on time, and having re-read the textbook and reviewed your lecture notes, it will be nearly impossible to resist showing off how much smarter you are than your fellow students (and the prof). Instead, enjoy the night before the morning of the test with your friends, and as many controlled (or illegal) substances as possible. Pizza and beer are cheap and available, but tequila shots and nachos, rum and coke, sake and sushi, or absinthe and caviar all work too. The only limits are those of your imagination and your Visa card.
Test Day:
If you can't bear to stay at home and just skip the test entirely, start off by drifting about half way through the period. Take your time settling into your seat, borrowing a pen, and getting out your I-pod and cell phone. When requested by the invigilators to put them away, roll your eyes, and move with sullen deliberation to ensure you convey your displeasure at the imposition. The more you annoy your instructors, the better your chance of losing those last few crucial points on a test.
Starting the Test:
All of your painfully acquired academic habits will prompt you to write your name and section number on the test booklet, before carefully reading over the exam questions. Do not give in to these inner promptings—a clearly legible name on an exam booklet, even an almost blank one, might mean the difference between a D- and an F.
Visual Appearance:
Handwritten tests provide many opportunities for creative failure. Avoid pencils. It's too easy to neatly erase an inadvertently correct answer and replace it with a wrong one. Leaky ball point pens are ideal. Every time you write a clear, coherent or well-informed sentence by mistake, you can cross it out and draw a long arrow to some distant spot on the page with a "correction", until your answer looks like an artistic post-modern rendition of a bowl filled with blue spaghetti.
Contents:
First, leave a few questions blank. There is no danger of partial credit for an unanswered question. If you read the question sheet you run the risk of answering the questions the instructor asked. Remember, the less relevant your answer to the question (or the course as a whole), the lower the risk of partial credit. Avoid references to the reading or lectures—any sign that you actually showed up to class or did some of the reading might earn you a few points per question.
Style:
Use bad grammar and informal slang to make a bad impression. Almost any use of "lol" is guaranteed to take a few points off your total. If there are 10 questions, don't answer them in order, but start with 7, then try 3 (and then cross out 3 and move it to the end of the answer sheet), then 2, etc. If the question asks for a specific number of sub-answers ("three examples of …", "4 types of …") do not number them clearly. The harder the exam is to grade, the harder it will be graded.
Attitude:
Make sure to clearly indicate your contempt for the course, the readings, and the prof in your exam. Instead of "King Lear was a profoundly moving drama about an aging monarch …", for example, try "the book was about this old dude going on about a bunch of boring stuff i forgot … lol." The worse the attitude, the worse the grade.
