From: wcharmon (wcharmon@wt.net)
Date: 08/20/02-03:19:52 PM Z
During my undergraduate career at a large Midwestern
university, I had an interestingly similar 'hazing'
experience in the sciences. My undergraduate degree in a
'soft' science (geophysics) required me to take many
semesters of 'physics for physics majors' across campus. I
crammed, studied, sweated, and walked cockily into the first
physics exam. 2 hours later, I left crushed and defeated. I
got my exam back a few days later: 25% . I talked to the
professor afterward and asked if I should drop the class. He
said, "Oh, no, don't do that. You did fine. Your grade on
the curve is a B+" My jaw dropped. He explained that he
purposely made exams virtually impossible to 'ace' because
that was the only method he had for identifying the
occasional unrecognized 'next Richard Feynman' tripping
innocently through the program. He rationalized that if the
exams were not rigorous in the extreme, he could not
separate the signal from the noise.
Seemed pretty cruel at the time. But he did have a point
about using this sort of academic hazing to separate the
wheat from the chaff. He knew that most of us were not
heading for a career in theoretical physics, but wanted to
make sure that someone with that sort of aptitude was going
to be recognized.
My somewhat strained analogy may fail on one point however.
This professor did know what he was talking about and this
is the ultimate 'black and white' sort of subject matter.
THe art field is about the complete polar opposite from
physics in terms of objective 'truth'. Maybe the only lesson
to draw from this is that sometimes professors can just seem
really perverse.
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