Sci-fi fan Mal Jayne was surprised last semester after continuously receiving poor grades in his Physics I course.
Jayne, who picked up the syllabus on the first day of class and didn’t go to class again until the first test, felt confident in his ability to do well. He had read everything: from H.G. Wells to Orson Scott Card. He watched all the Star Treks, even Deep Space Nine! Two weeks into classes his friend asked him why he never attended. Jayne replied,“Physics is super easy. Don’t worry, I’ll ace all the tests.”
However, when the first test rolled around and Jayne showed up to class for a second time, things didn’t quite turn out that way.
He was late because he couldn’t decide if he should bring his calculator, but then thought to himself “Nah I can do it all mentally.” The test was, according to witnesses, over something called “constant acceleration.” Jayne didn’t know what that meant, but he “kept seeing this variable t so he assumed it had to do with time travel”. He stated that he was confident working the “New age Whovian Mechanics” problems but had some trouble remembering the “more classical Well’s spinning disk equation.” Overall he was confident in his performance on the test.
He was surprised a week later when he received an F on the test.
Confused, Jayne decided that he would actually spend some time studying for the next test.The night before test number two Jayne spent an hour on Wikipedia reading about various physics related topics. He walked into the classroom the next morning with only 5 minutes left in the test period. Jayne wrote “Everything is relative” on the top of his test and turned it in. His professor hunted him down two weeks later and handed him his test back with a big red C on it. This, in fact, wasn’t his grade.
His professor advised him that he couldn’t pass the class and that Jayne should work on a way to keep the F from going into his GPA. Jayne stated that he was going to take action to remove the bad grade from his GPA but apparently found a sticky note on his desk from his future self claiming that he would somehow actually pass the class. Jayne decided to stick with the class despite it being mathematically impossible for him to pass. Also because he was apparently predestined to get an A he still did not attend any lectures.