It was an “obstacle” course—one that either earned you your diploma or forced you to change majors. It was offered once each year and taught by only one professor. I signed up.
On the first day of class he laid out his plan. We would have regular homework assignments that would be discussed in class; he would give weekly quizzes; there would be a mid-term exam and a final. Then he delivered the bad news: only the grade on the final exam would count. One test, one shot, one grade. Take it or leave it.
A lot of students left it. The second class meeting was only two-thirds the size of the first, but I was still there. I was determined.
The first homework assignment was daunting. The text was difficult and the assigned problems were quite advanced. The second assignment tripled in difficulty. The text became so inscrutable it may as well have been written in Mandarin. I performed dismally on the first quiz. I began to panic.
The class sessions were no help. Whenever the professor attempted to “help” with a homework problem, he would get bogged down in the minutia of the mathematics, backtracking, erasing, drifting hopelessly from thought to thought. Finally, he would just scratch his head and wander on to another problem, leaving the first unresolved and the class in utter confusion. Was he a moron or were we the idiots? Was he an Einstein who just couldn’t communicate? Why was he even allowed to teach this class?
I knew I was smart. My GPA was high. I was making a sincere effort. Why was I having so much difficulty? I consulted two acquaintances in the class, men I knew to be exceedingly intelligent, whose study habits I knew to be excellent. They were both floundering, too. We made a pact. We would form a study group, just the three of us, and we would master this material. We began to meet weekly.
The rest of the semester continued in much the same way. We struggled with the text. We agonized over the homework. The classes left us frustrated and confused. Our quiz scores remained shameful. Class size dwindled noticeably with every session.
The mid-term exam was terrifying: six pages filled with dozens of long, detailed problems. On at least half of them I didn’t even understand the question, much less know how to begin solving the problem. Despair set in. I began to consider a change of majors.
In the study group, we redoubled our efforts. We lengthened our sessions, tackled even more unassigned problems, quizzed each other constantly, created outlines and flash cards. We stayed up late and got up early. We trembled at the thought of the final exam.
The dreaded day arrived. By that time, I was so numb with effort and anxiety that I had finally achieved a kind of Zen state. I was completely calm. I was resigned to a career in fast food service. It was too late to run. I decided that if I had to crash and burn, at least I would do it with a little grace.
The exams were passed out. The first thing I noticed was that the test consisted of a single page. There were only ten questions, and each one was stated briefly. There were no convoluted word problems, no litany of given conditions, no complex equations or confounding issues. None of the questions bore any resemblance to our homework problems, our quizzes or the mid‑term exam.
The first question was fundamental theory. I answered swiftly and moved on. The second question: again, fundamental theory. And so on, through all ten questions. I completed the final in twenty minutes, feeling fairly certain I’d answered each question correctly.
It was at that point I concluded that I’d gone insane. I’d simply cracked and failed to grasp anything about the test. I began to reread the questions. I reworked every problem. I came up with every answer again, answers that matched my first effort on every question. I was done. Slowly I stood up, vaguely aware that I was the first to do so. I dropped my exam paper on the front desk and left the room, not quite certain whether I’d just made 100% or a zero. At that point, I didn’t even really care. It was over, and that’s all that mattered.
Well I aced that exam and graduated. And I did so in spite of having such a poor teacher.
But was he really so bad?
His hands-off style forced me to work much harder than I would otherwise have worked. He put me in a position of relying only on my own intelligence, persistence and whatever support system I could create for myself. He provided no assistance at all, but in doing so he motivated me so thoroughly that I completely mastered a most difficult subject. Could that have been his plan all along? To this day, I’m not sure. But in the end, what I learned from him has been much more useful than any classroom subject.
He may not have been my best teacher, but he was certainly one of the most effective.