Last semester I took astronomy, which was a fairly easy class, and not as interesting as I was hoping it would be. We didn’t really spend much time on the sky, and talking about constellations and such – apparently that’s more astrology. Oh well. So, much of the class was a lab where we would have to do math, and use equations, and generally do things (the complete opposite of what I had expected).
Like good slackers, many of us managed to get by doing as little work as possible. There were some labs where I never had to leave my seat because people would come by with answers, and I would give them some answers I had gotten from someone else. It was wonderful, and we were all doing fairly well in the class, until the Lab Final came around. The lab final was more strict than the standard labs, and we all had to work alone.
Because of our lab habits earlier in the semester, none of us really knew anything, and we were all pretty sure we were going to bomb that final. Our TA knew this, and being the cool guy he is, helped us out in an incredibly cool way. With about 10 minutes left in the final, he went up to the front of the class and told us, “I’m gonna go downstairs and get a snack out of the machine. I’ll be back in a little while.”
So the cheating commenced, and as far as I know, we all did pretty well on that final. It’s nice when people let things that don’t matter slide.