Horray for Number Two!

I had to see a professor in his office hours last week and he asked me how I was doing. I hesitated. At this juncture, I had two options:

1. Lie. My professor feels better about me but I become a horrible person.
2. Tell the truth. Appear to be emo PMSing emotional wreck that can't cope with a measley twelve credit hours.

I threw caution to the wind and went with number two. "Actually, I think I'm getting progressively dumber as the semester progresses." From the adjacent office, the neighboring professor overheard our conversation and chimed in: "Oh, thank god I'm not the only one!" Horray for honesty.

I got to thinking about the incident later. What if I had hit upon a universal constant in the college experience? As I went to my classes, I did an informal poll, asking various people I ran into how smart they felt at the beginning of the semester, versus how smart they feel now. The results were disturbing:



The evidence is irrfutable, and very useful for explaining a variety of phenonoma, like the 2004 presidental election. Democrats were counting on college students showing up in droves to vote for Kerry, but we didn't show up. Why? Because by November, we were already falling down the stupidy curve. Since it also applies to professors, it goes a long way towards explaining how they will assign rediculously complicated projects in the last weeks of class, only to later complain that they have a lot of grading to do.

I have a solution. It involves time travel, and moving from the end of the semester (where things are difficult but you're stupid), to the beginning of the semester (where things are easy, but you're smart). This would not only allow you to bring the intelligence/workload of a semester into balance, but you'll notice that it also generates a time loop, where as soon as you return to the end of the semester, you get bumped back to the beginning. That's right. Not only does your semester go better, you never get old, and you never die. Genius.