[00:00.00]Text Got My B.A.by Sheer Luck
[00:04.41]NOW IT CAN BE TOLD:I got my B.A.by sheer luck.Here is my story.
[00:10.58]Professor Kolb was especially difficult that year.
[00:15.12]Exactly 63.6 percent of the class failed Egyptian History.
[00:21.89]And if it were not for sheer luck,I'd have raised the percentage to 65.4.
[00:28.42]I remember most vividly the frightening pace of the lectures.
[00:34.59]No one could take notes as fast as"Old Kolb"talked.
[00:40.02]I usually missed more than half of each lecture.
[00:44.98]Without complete notes,in was impossible to study.
[00:50.02]I was lucky to have gotten even the 38 in one exam.
[00:55.90]I knew that my only chance for survival was to get fuller notes.
[01:02.67]That night after the exam grades came out,I thought over my disgraceful grade.
[01:09.12]Suddenly I hit upon an idea:
[01:13.35]Why not leave every other line on my note paper blank?
[01:18.79]Then I could recall the lecture afterward and fill in the missing parts.
[01:25.13]The next day I tried this plan and it worked!What luck!
[01:31.19]At first it was difficult to recall the lecture,
[01:35.95]but as days passed,it became sort of a game.
[01:40.81]Often in my room I would imitate the professor
[01:45.35]and try to give the lecture as best as I could without looking at my notes.
[01:52.22]One evening while reciting the day's lecture to myself,
[01:56.77]I made an important discovery.
[02:00.24]In trying to make my presentation as smooth as possible,
[02:05.99]I used the transitional words
[02:09.62]"Now that we have discussed the major reason for the success of Pharaoh Hophra,
[02:15.55]let us look at the minor reasons."
[02:19.31]At that moment I stopped still,
[02:23.26]for at no time did the professor
[02:27.33]ever cut up the lecture into topics and subtopics
[02:32.58]however,the topics and subtopics were there,waiting to be discovered,
[02:38.96]With this secret in mind,
[02:42.19]I found that I could take better notes during the lecture,
[02:46.87]and after class I could very easily supply the missing parts.
[02:52.12]An incident finally convinced me of my intellectual inferiority
[02:57.76]when I found that the other students just"flipped the pages"of the textbook.
[03:03.33]But poor me,I had to work on each chapter for hours.
[03:08.60]I was lucky when,looking in the library for a book on Egyptian religion,
[03:13.93]I ran across a whole shelf filled with books on Egypt.
[03:19.78]I spent the rest of the day until 10:00 p.m.(closing time)reading.
[03:26.45]I finally picked out three books which were easy enough for me to understand,
[03:32.51]and I took these back to my room.
[03:36.06]By first reading these books,
[03:39.61]I found I could understand better the assigned chapter in the textbook.
[03:45.49]So with luck I solved the textbook problem.
[03:49.93]There I was,as the final examination approached,
[03:54.97]with a note-book about two inches thick,filled with lecture notes.
[04:00.64]Now,was I to memorize all these notes?And the textbook?
[04:06.99]Realizing that I couldn't memorize everything in my notes,
[04:12.16]I decided to review each lecture with one thought in mind:
[04:18.01]"What is the really important idea here?"
[04:22.69]As I found the answer,
[04:26.03]I'd jot the central point on separate sheets which I called"Summary Sheets."
[04:32.80]When I finished,
[04:35.64]I had reduced inches of lecture notes to just twelve pages of "main issues."
[04:41.42]I then did the same with my textbook.
[04:45.78]I learned these main issues by first reading them over,thinking about them,
[04:52.26]then without looking at my notes,by trying to recite them in my own words.
[04:58.79]I went through my summary sheets in the same way,issue by issue.
[05:05.03]Having mastered these main issues,I composed ten questions,
[05:10.88]questions that I'd ask if I were the professor.
[05:15.85]I pretended that I was in the examination room,
[05:20.50]and I spent the next four hours answering my ten questions.
[05:25.85]I then corrected my answers by referring to the lecture and the textbook notes,
[05:31.81]and much to my delight,I had discussed all the facts and ideas accurately.
[05:38.36]For the first time I felt that I had achieved something.
[05:43.41]I went to bed at 10:00 for a good night's sleep,
[05:48.87]having refused to go to a movie with the rest of the boys.
[05:54.04]On the way to the examination room the next morning,
[05:58.58]I knew without question that my luck had run out when I met Jack,
[06:04.64]who sat next to me.
[06:07.60]He had not taken a single note all semester;
[06:12.64]he had not even"flipped"the textbook pages.
[06:16.87]When I asked why he wasn't nervous,he answered,
[06:21.52]"This is the semester for Examination Set #4."
[06:26.56]"What's Examination Set #4?"
[06:30.61]Everybody on campus except me,I guess,
[06:35.18]knew that"Old Kolb"had five sets of examinations(ten questions in every set),
[06:42.44]which he used in turn over a five-year period.
[06:47.30]Though"Old Kolb"collected the question sheets from each student,
[06:52.76]he underestimated their organizing ability.
[06:57.20]The plan worked like this:
[07:00.96]Some students were given the task to memorize question #1,
[07:06.53]another group to memorize #2,and so forth.
[07:11.28]When the students left the examination room
[07:15.54]they jotted down these questions quickly from memory.
[07:20.50]In this way they finally collected all five sets of the examination.
[07:37.14]I knew my luck had run out.As the examination sheets were passed out,
[07:43.99]I heard moans of various kinds:"Oh,No!""No!"and hysterical laughter.
[07:51.72]I thought that perhaps the professor
[07:55.79]had by mistake given out Exam #5 instead of the expected #4.
[08:02.35]By the time the sheets reached me,I,too,gasped,"Oh!It can't be."
[08:09.90]They were the same ten questions that I had made up only yesterday!
[08:16.67]How could that be?One chance in a million,I'm sure.I wrote and wrote and wrote.
[08:24.92]"Old Kolb'gave me a 100 plus.He wrote a note saying,
[08:31.48]'Thank goodness for one good scholar in all my years of teaching."
[08:37.72]But he didn't know what luck I had,and I never told him.
[08:42.79]Now that twenty years have passed,
[08:46.32]I think that it is safe to reveal
[08:50.57]that here is one fellow who got his B.A.by sheer luck. |