Ouch!

Today in a psychology class, my instructor had an awesome, unethical idea to take one kid and make him look really smart; then take another kid, and make him look like an "idjut."

Here's the details.

I was running late to class, so when I came rushing into the building, she pulled me aside in the hallway where she had been standing, and fed me the plan. She told me to think of 5 questions which were general knowledge, or really anything that is not personal information about me. However, the catch was that they were supposed to be impossibly tough questions.

Just before the class ended, the instructor made it seem that this was not set up, by asking for a volunteer to be quiz master, so I played along like it sounded interesting but had no idea what was going on. She picked another guy in our class whom she had had before and knew would not take it personally to be the guinea pig.

We stepped to the front of the class and she instructed me to ask him 5 questions of common knowledge, not stating a difficulty level. I asked my questions, which he had 10 seconds each to answer, and got zero correct.

The idea of the exercise was to then have everyone take a survey asking how smart they thought each of us two volunteers were. Well, it worked. General consensus was that what I had considered general knowledge was way out of his league, making me look pretty smart. After we talked about our scores, our instructor told everyone that it was a set-up and it was supposed to be hard and letting them in on our scam.

What she did not tell everyone was that I had really just thought of the questions off of the top of my head sitting in class. I did not use the internet to come up with these, I did not look up any answers or call anyone, and they all came off the top of my head. What she did not tell them was...


I'M AWESOME!

Now, I do not mean to boast, but this dude had no idea on any of these questions. When's the last time you stumped the average college student?

In any case, I thought the exercise was interesting and I just wanted to tell my story.


Also, if you're interested, here's the questions I asked:
(See if you can answer them without looking them up)

What is the capital of Nepal?
How many points is a "try" worth in rugby?
What was the first make of car manufactured?
In what year was the state of Missouri admitted to the Union?
Which state is the only to have another state's entire name contained within it?


How many do you think you got correct?

Okay, here's the answers:

#1-Kathmandu is the capital of Nepal (I had a Nepalese roommate freshman year)
#2-A rugby union try is worth 5 points (they're worth four in rugby league, but he did not know a thing about rugby anyhow)
#3-Volkswagen (not correct, technically I did not specify a steam engine, an electric, or an internal combustion engine, but it does not matter because I purposely did not say first mass produced-- and he said Ford and played right into my hands.)
#4-1820 (Compromise of 1820, look it up)
#5-Arkansas (Saw it on Jeopardy! last week)


So, if you have a legitimate, interesting, or in any way valid response, please leave it in my comments section. (or your score for how many questions you got right)

~~Thought for the day~~

"How do you feel about Governor Jay Nixon?"

"I think that sum'bitch stoopid!"


Until next time, stay awesome!