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I once took a critical thinking course and bought the textbook 2nd hand from the college bookstore. A week or two in, I noticed half of a sentence written in t
by ortusdux 4y ago
I once took a critical thinking course and bought the textbook 2nd hand from the college bookstore. A week or two in, I noticed half of a sentence written in the margin. As the professor started teaching the topic from that page, he rhetorically asked a question, did not get an answer, and then answered himself with the sentence from the book. I filliped ahead and found that the entire book was annotated with all of his answers, anecdotes, and various other helpful notes. There was even a table that accurately listed his wardrobe choices! The notes were in several different handwritings, and the book had been resold over a dozen times, so that professor must have been teaching the same class the exact same way for a decade or more. I quickly became a star pupil as I always had an answer ready. I added a few notes along the way and then sold it back to the bookstore at the end of the year. I really wanted to keep it for posterity, but It just seemed wrong to take it out of circulation.
- lostlogin 4y agoThis is like the Harry Potter book where Harry gets Voldemorts old potions notebook. It made him a star pupil too. Do you have a scar on your eyebrow?
- cafeinux 4y agoThat's the sixth book, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". But if I recall correctly, the original owner of the book, the Half-Blood Prince, was none other than Snape, not Voldemort.
- lostlogin 4y agoI stand corrected. Thanks.
- mecha_ghidorah 4y agoGod I thought that was such a weird book. It attempts to build loads of tension around the idea that an old textbook has gasp prewritten notes in it. I know that it tries to imply it might be Voldemort's textbook but even if it was... would that be a huge deal unless it had something useful/interesting specifically about Voldemort? For me at least that part of it fell spectacularly flat
- ejolto 4y agoDid you read the second book? Voldemort's diary plays a huge part in that one, so it's not surprising that the characters would find Voldemort's text book interesting or ominous (possible horcrux too).
- mecha_ghidorah 4y agoI did read the second book but the problem is that from a story perspective another old book being a horcrux would be... kinda lame IMO
- jstx1 4y agoActually Harry dismisses the idea about it being Voldemort very early in the book because Voldemort would never call himself half-blood.
- mecha_ghidorah 4y agoYeah that is true, and I do kind of remember that. Admittedly it has been a while and I have a (possibly incorrect) memory that it took annoyingly long for him to do that. My memory is also that despite dismissing it as Voldemort this text book was still treated as super ominous even after
- ncmncm 4y agoAll the HP books were like that. In most cases, somebody just doing the obvious thing at the beginning of the book would have left nothing to write about in the rest. So, they just didn't do that thing.
- pm3003 4y agoTalk about critical thinking...
- Kichererbsen 4y agoThat's basically the plot of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince!
- dotancohen 4y ago> I really wanted to keep it for posterity Actually, by reselling the book back to the bookstore, you did literally ensure it's utility for posterity.
- atmosx 4y agoHahaha sounds like the “half-blooded” Prince’s book!
- MisterBastahrd 4y agoReminds me of a geology professor I had in college. She had a fully photographic memory and recited the entire book, word for word, front to back during class without anything at her lectern. As impressive as that was, it's also what made me skip her class except for tests, because what's the point?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- UncleEntity 4y agoYeah, once I figured out a professor was teaching straight out of the textbook I’d just skip class and read the book before the tests. Was always the general ed classes nobody cared about, including the instructor, so no harm done.
- anukin 4y agoSeems like the story of half blood prince right there.
- topologie 4y agoThis is really awesome. It's literally a real-life version of what happens in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. :) From the wiki page: `Harry finds an old potions textbook, once belonging to "The Half-Blood Prince", an individual who wrote numerous spells and tips in the book. Harry, using the tips in the book, excels in Potions class, winning a bottle of Felix Felicis, or "Liquid Luck".`
- kaesar14 4y agoYou lived the Half Blood Prince!
- trebbble 4y agoThat element of the Half-Blood Prince was taken from real life. Used textbooks have been preferred by students for precisely for this reason (well, cost too, but this is a well-known benefit) in colleges since... well, probably since textbooks have existed.
- moron4hire 4y agoHalfway through my college experience (around 2002 or so), the university started putting up blinders in the bookstore while they stocked shelves and wouldn't let you buy your books until basically the first day of class, specifically in an attempt to stymie students finding their books, looking them up, and buying them at 1/10th the price online. I mean, it wasn't my first experience with the university prioritizing profit over helping students, but it was definitely emblematic. Most of us figured out that we could get along fine not having the textbook in the first couple of weeks of class. But ultimately, the university was out to actively sabotage the used textbook market. The only source of used books was online. So I never got to experience this community of used book students.
- konschubert 4y agoWhat happened if you ordered the books only after the first day of class?
- trebbble 4y agoAt my school the savvy students wouldn't buy their books until after the first session of a course anyway, since the professors would often, in that first meeting, explain that some books listed in the syllabus as required were actually optional, or that they'd support some set of older editions of a book than the syllabus listed ("it lists the 5th edition, but it's OK if you get the 4th, and if all you can get ahold of is the 3rd, see me after class and we'll get something sorted out—but nothing older than that").
- h0p3 4y agoI hope you didn't cast any random spells scrawled in your Advanced Potion-Making book. Sectumsempra is a nono, I hear.
- gostsamo 4y agoRecently I read HPMOR and this paragraph was one of many delights there: The cold in the room seemed to deepen. “A sixth-year Gryffindor cast a curse at one of my more promising students, a sixth-year Slytherin.” Harry swallowed. “What...sort of curse?” And the fury on Professor Quirrell’s face was no longer contained. “Why bother to ask an unimportant question like that, Mr Potter? Our friend the sixth-year Gryffindor did not think it was important!” “Are you serious?” Harry said before he could stop himself. “No, I’m in a terrible mood today for no particular reason. Yes I’m serious, you fool! He didn’t know. He actually didn’t know. I didn’t believe it until the Aurors confirmed it under Veritaserum. He is in his sixth year at Hogwarts and he cast a high-level Dark curse without knowing what it did.” “You don’t mean,” Harry said, “that he was mistaken about what it did, that he somehow read the wrong spell description—” “All he knew was that it was meant to be directed at an enemy. He knew that was all he knew.” And that had been enough to cast the spell. “I do not understand how anything with that small a brain could walk upright.” “Indeed, Mr Potter,” said Professor Quirrell. There was a pause. Professor Quirrell leaned forward and picked up the silver inkwell from his desk, turning it around in his hands, staring at it as though wondering how he could go about torturing an inkwell to death. “Was the sixth-year Slytherin seriously hurt?” said Harry. “Yes.” “Was the sixth-year Gryffindor raised by Muggles?” “Yes.” “Is Dumbledore refusing to expel him because the poor boy didn’t know?” Professor Quirrell’s hands whitened on the inkwell. “Do you have a point, Mr Potter, or are you just stating the obvious?” “Professor Quirrell,” said Harry gravely, “all the Muggle-raised students in Hogwarts need a safety lecture in which they are told the things so ridiculously obvious that no wizardborn would ever think to mention them. Don’t cast curses if you don’t know what they do, if you discover something dangerous don’t tell the world about it, don’t brew high-level potions without supervision in a bathroom, the reason why there are underage magic laws, all the basics.”
- shepherdjerred 4y ago
- kyleblarson 4y agoI took an intro econ course in college in 1999. The professor gave us his past tests to use as practice and some of them dated back to the late 1950's.
- mmorearty 4y agoA joke I heard around 1988: A young man went back to visit his old economics professor, under whom he had studied many years earlier. He took a look at the final exam the professor was preparing to give the students. He said, "Professor, this exam is identical to the one you gave us year ago!" The professor replied, "That's okay, all the answers have changed."
- Spooky23 4y agoI took a German literature course in the 90s, the professor used the same quizzes and tests since the early 60s. A buddy of mine had a copy and I took the class for an easy A. The only gotcha is that you had to be physically present and give him advance notice of you were to be out.
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y agoThis is bringing back bad memories of my Electromagnetic Fields class...
- madengr 4y agoWe had the “test of knowledge”, which if you didn’t pass (multiple attempts), you didn’t pass the course. It was 60 questions in 180 seconds. No hard calculations, just stuff you were an embarrassment to the prof if you passed EM and didn’t know. He gave it right before break (3 hour class). I got a 96 first attempt. Next highest grade was a 30. He said I could leave as the remainder of class was to go over the test. I literally strutted out and said I was going to have a cold beer. Good times.
- zeristor 4y ago“None shall pass!” My EM theory second year was quite tricky
- 1-6 4y agoThis can make a nice movie plot.
- sebastianconcpt 4y agoTotally!
- tshaddox 4y agoSo my version of that story is less analog and arguably less academically honest. I had a somewhat challenging mid-level math class in college where after each homework assignment and test the professor would give us a URL to a PDF of his scanned handwritten completed version of the work. The URL path was something like /math-321/2019/fall/test-1.pdf, and the professor diligently made sure that each file wasn't available until after each test was graded. Unfortunately, the professor was not sufficiently diligent to remove URLs using the exact same pattern for previous years and semesters of the same course. I discovered throughout the course that there had been some trivial changes to the assignments and tests (moving questions around, slightly changing constants, etc.) and only a few non-trivial changes.
- causality0 4y agoGods I miss the halcyon days of pulling the entire file directory down and rooting around for interesting stuff like that.
- idontwantthis 4y agoMy digital logic professor was so lazy he reused previous year homework questions on exams and exams were completely open notes. The old questions were available with answers on old versions of the course website that were still online. Everyone just brought the answers to each exam.
- robbintt 4y agoHe may not have been lazy; he may not believe in the system.
- MonkeyClub 4y agoHe was probably still believing in the salary he was drawing from the system.
- ralgozino 4y ago
- docmars 4y agoYour professor was the Half-Blood Prince.
- alexchantavy 4y agoYes! This is exactly what this story reminded me of.
- shider0110 4y ago
- ortusdux 4y agoIn a similar vein, I also found a 1950's guide to a happy marriage that had been thoroughly annotated by the husband. He was so honest that it was like finding someone's therapy session notes at a thrift store. The inside cover had a pro-con table, with 'appearance' as the first entry in the con section. Inside the back cover was a game-plan that seemed to indicate that he wanted to strengthen his marriage, so I guess that's nice. I just hope that his wife didn't crack it open before it ended up in the donate pile.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- SLWW 4y agoWould love to find that book as I'm sure his annotations help set expectations. It's nice when you find someone trying to improve there love life when the honeymoon phase is over and the somewhat crushing reality of her/him shortcomings come to the surface.
- calvinmorrison 4y agoNot a book, but I just picked up a index card metal box from the Goodwill. Somewhere around 50 index cards, diligently updated with new addresses, half on type half by hand. This guy was in correspondence, or at least subscribed to a half dozen oddball societies, religious groups and more boring local plumbing companies etc. It's a fascinating bit, I think for my next RR&R Challenge, I might try to find out who this guy was. Would make at least for a fun tale cold calling and saying "Hey, can you tell me what the current address you have on file for account #217 is?" . Most recent update looks to be around the year 2000.
- cure 4y ago> ... found that the entire book was annotated with all of his answers, anecdotes, and various other helpful notes. Didn't that defeat the purpose of the critical thinking course?
- Victerius 4y ago"You dare use my own spells against me, Potter."