Sweat drips from my brow as I stare blankly at the page. Think Megan, think! What the hell is the biological species concept? Why does this crab have a non-functioning claw? Why the hell do I care about these stupid fricking lizards on an undiscovered island?! I slam my head on the desk in despair.
When I decided to take an introductory ecology course, I thought I was signing up for slacker science. When I walked in the first day and the professor pulled out an overhead projector, I could only imagine myself back in high school biology class. Time to kick back with the Onion and enjoy.
Oh sure I did the reading... well, at least the highlighted parts some student before me had graciously passed on. And I studied with the help of my study group - a friend from high school who drew funny pictures of bacteria and viruses doing the nasty. I even went to discussion, where I texted my friends and ate M&Ms. I like to think I was using natural selection by eating all the brown ones firsts. Or would it be artificial selection since they use food dye?
But now, now it was all coming back to bite me in the gluteus maximus. How was I supposed to know that a class where we spent most of the hour discussing multiple-choice questions with our neighbor would suddenly turn into an ass kicker extraordinaire?
Somehow the questions had gone from blatantly obvious to riddles that made several brain cells melt just from reading them. This beast was 20 questions of pure soul-crunching pain, the kind where all the answers are right but you have to choose the best one. I looked at my professor's smug smile, and could tell he was laughing on the inside.
I called on the spirit of my former physics teacher, the infamous Mrs. Balbach. She too had a passion for making ludicrously hard tests, but I had somehow persevered then. I heard her overly peppy voice echoing in my head. Passionate perseverance promotes progress!"" I attacked my test with new vigor... for about five minutes.
It was then I remembered that the reason I had passed Mrs. Balbach's class probably had a lot to do with the fact that I had agreed to baby-sit her children for free, and not my stunning 33 percent on the final. Damn it.
Snapping back to the task in hand, I began to trudge my way through. I gritted my teeth, I pulled my hair and at one point started screaming, ""FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND DECENT WHEN WILL IT END?! KILL ME NOW!!!"" My neighbors stared at me in a mix of fright and confusion. I knew many of them were screaming the same on the inside, but the TA asked me to be quiet anyway.
Finally it was time to turn in the exam. With mascara tracks staining my teary face, I gave the professor my best ""please, have pity on me"" puppy dog eyes and slumped away.
A few days later, the time came to meet my fate on Learn@UW. I logged in, telling myself that next time would be different. Next time I would study. Next time I would... holy shit! A 90 percent?! An AB!? I am the champion! Hahaha, in your face Mrs. Balbach. Passionate persistence may apply to flip cup, but good old-fashioned luck won this day.
Now, I knew this time I had lucked out. When the next class rolled around I would be a model student. Pen in hand, I would jot down all the tidbits on the slides, even extras the professor threw up on the overhead projector. I might even answer an in-class question.
This was my intention today in class as I sat down. I took notes and I had just about raised my hand to answer that question when Josh elbowed me. Today he had drawn a gang of bacteria and a gang of viruses engaged in an epic street battle.
I glanced back at the board, to see the professor defining what adaptation was. My eyes drifted back to the gang war taking over my friend's notebook. ""Oh well,"" I thought, as I added a group of amoebas from the south side rolling in. How hard could a multiple-choice test be anyway?
If you want to be Megan's study buddy and draw inappropriate yet hilarious pictures in Josh's notebook, E-mail her at mcorbett2@wisc.edu.
