psych-o

Got my grades back for my paper(s)! And yes, he did talk about the fake papers. It went down like this:

He was a little late to class, so by the time he got there, all of us were already sitting down waiting. He walked in and didn't say a word (which is very unusual for him), went to the front and put his stuff down, crossed his arms and just starred at us. His eyes went from one person to the next and he didn't speak for a good 2 minutes. Everyone thought we were in trouble, but I knew what he was really thinking. :)

He got out the stack of graded papers and said, "Now, before I give these back to you, I want to say a few things. Overall, I thought the content of my presents [he calls all papers we hand in "his presents"] was decent. Most of you got Bs and Cs, a couple of As, and just a few Ds. There were, however, 2 papers that I was unable to grade. This is amazing to me because I was taught at this school for over 10 years now. I've been teaching this class for over 10 years. I've been using this same syllabus for over 10 years. And I've assigned this exact paper for over 10 years. And never....NEVER in over 10 years have I seen anything like this. This could be brilliant, or it could be tragic." He stopped right there and did the 2 minute staring thing again.

He continued, "Well, I really don't know how to explain this, but I think a couple of you might have misunderstood the assignment. See, there were a few people who didn't turn in a paper with their name on it. The thing is, I received two papers with no names of anybody in this class. One was from a dog, and the other from a mermaid. " At this point, everyone busted out laughing and I was careful to do the same. He went on, "Yeah, yeah, I know that it's kind of funny. In fact, I was laughing so hard I almost cried while reading them. But then I thought about the people that didn't turn in any papers. I mean, if these papers are meant to be jokes, that's great. Props to you, man, because you are hysterical. BUT... If these papers are NOT jokes, and if one of you in this class really truly believes that you are a....a dog, or a...mermaid, please, please PLEASE come talk to me after class. You know, I got my PhD in this and we can talk through some of these issues and really get to the bottom of this. I want you all to be functioning members of society, but thinking you're a mermaid won't get you very far, I promise. So, if you have any sort of identity issues, please come see me and I'll help get you through this."

The entire class was laughing like crazy and asking all sorts of questions about the papers. He refused to answer any questions about the content of the weird papers "in case they were true." Of course, the speculation was also hilarious to listen to. Everyone was asking everyone else if "they were the one" and I made sure to say and do the same things that everyone else was doing. Anyway, everyone got a good laugh out of it and, for the rest of the class, the papers remain a mystery.

It was difficult for me to pull the two papers, plus my real paper, out of the stack without anyone noticing. I eventually got all three, but I have no idea if anyone saw me or not. While looking through the stack of papers, though, I noticed something. First of all, this is the 5th or 6th paper we've written for this class so far. Every single paper has to have a standard APA title page, which the professor give us the format for. It's not very hard to make a title page with a template. In fact, after 5 or 6 times, you'd think the title pages would be flawless. So...looking through the stack of papers that day, every single paper had some sort of red mark on the title page. Most of them had alot of red marks and notes on them. Only three papers were completely clear of red marks. So...if he was paying any attention, he probably could have figured out that they were mine. I'm hoping he didn't notice...

Today I started the first wave of the epidemic that I want to start. I convinced about 8 students to write one fake paper each for the next introspection, without letting them even suspect that I was the original person. Yes, I am that good. My goal (and theirs too, now) is to, by the last introspection, to get all 40 students to write a fake paper each. Hopefully, the professor will have twice as many papers to go through by the end of the semester and maybe the creepy stalker-man won't ask for papers with so much personal info in them. Maybe that's why he calls them "presents"....