Professors Conspiring To Kill Students

Psychology Professor Eric Purman delivers the negative reinforcement portion of his final exam.

CAMPUS - Following one of the longest and most dismal Grinnell winters in popular memory, professors have begun an academic crackdown that threatens to kill a large portion of the student body.

Many students have been complaining about obscene course requirements and deadlines that are impossible to meet as the campus approaches the end of the semester.

“This has been the worst semester ever,” said Erik Browman ’12. “I have to conduct twelve different random-sample interviews of the student body, write a total of thirty pages of literary analysis on four books I haven’t read, do an in-class presentation on post-modernist-feminist-Marxist-Freudian-Christian themes in Bolivian pottery during the years of 1998-1999, and postulate the existential ramifications of finding the ‘god particle’ with the Large Hadron Collider, all by next Tuesday.”

“I can’t even remember what I have to do for my other three classes,” said Browman.

Other students claim that professors have forced them to perform sadistically difficult tasks in class. “On Monday, I raised my hand in chemistry to ask a question about the reading, and my professor wouldn’t listen until I asked it in traditional Chinese,” said Sarah Wuhlfer ’14. “But there is no word for ‘plutonium’ in traditional Chinese, so I couldn’t ask the question.”

Justin Ellinburg ’13 recently learned what his computer science final would entail. “My professor is giving us a half hour to code an infinite state machine on a graphing calculator while traversing an obstacle course,” said Ellinburg. “How am I supposed to implement recursive logic while crawling under barbed wire?” Other students will have to complete their finals while crossing alligator ponds, and one notable linguistics course will literally have to jump through flaming hoops.

A professor of economics, who has asked to remain anonymous, admitted to taking pleasure in ruining students’ social lives and general health. “You know how most classes have one or two students that just love to hear themselves talk? Every one of my seminar students is like that,” said the bitter economics professor. “At some point in February, I thought to myself, ‘Fine, they think they’re so hot, let’s see how they handle three twenty-page research papers in one month.’” In the seminar’s class meeting on Thursday, half of the students hadn’t slept for five days. “Nothing like a little sleep deprivation to shut your students up,” said the professor.

“What’s most disturbing about this stress is it seems to be affecting virtually everyone on campus,” said Residence Life Coordinator Julie Fellows. “According to a recent survey, 100% of students are presently faced with a major paper, presentation, or final exam of some sort. Not even the flu is that thorough.”

“On the bright side,” continued Fellows, “this should really help with the housing overflow.”