“I had never seen German before, but the material appeared no less foreign than differential equations.”

While taking what he believed to be his first Math 54 midterm, one student who preferred to remain unnamed sat through almost the entire length of a German 103 exam computing calculations. It was not until the final 10 minutes that he realized he was in the wrong classroom.

“I was looking around me and suddenly felt a pang of uneasiness when I noticed I was the only kid punching data into my calculator,” he confessed. “Meanwhile, everyone was writing essays.”

According to our sources, the student had been enrolled in Math 54 since day one but has been trailing helplessly behind all semester.

“I had really been meaning to buy the textbook, but I never got around to it. We also get 10 homeworks dropped, and I’ve already used eight of those slips, so I hadn’t been getting any practice,” the student said. (Reporters reminded him that it’s only week four.)

When asked if he had tried studying at all in the past week, the student said he had been coming to the Glade every day with a notebook and pen but had failed to be productive. When questioned about his poor judgment in study spaces, the student reminded us that Moffitt wasn’t a viable option, seeing as the seats are always taken.

He also noted that while attending his math lectures might have been helpful, he really could not be blamed for missing them. He then proceeded to admit that he hadn’t showed up enough times to remember the correct room number. Feeling the need to justify his actions, he furrowed his eyebrows and asked, “How would you feel if you had a 10 a.m.?”

Distressed, the graduate student instructor who graded the exam insisted that she had tried to find any possible way to offer the student a few points but came up with nothing.

“I couldn’t even credit him for signing his name because he wrote it in English,” the GSI said. Shaking her head, she added: “Students think we enjoy giving poor grades. The truth is, nobody wants to be the monster who marks an exam with a big fat zero.”

What the Clog found most interesting is that the student didn’t leave as soon he realized he was taking the wrong exam — he worked hopelessly until time was called.

“I figured that maybe they had some kind of transfer policy, you know? Like, if I scored at least a couple points on this test, they could move some over to my math class.”

The student added in his defense: “It’s tough when you’re in a business consulting club, working as a lab assistant and applying to be an RA. I used to be good at managing my time, but now my workload is just another level.”

We concluded by asking the student what his plans were moving forward. He sighed and looked off into some ambiguous point in the distance. “That is the question, isn’t it? That’s what we’re all asking ourselves.”