ID: 15193
College
A philosophy professor stood before his class with some items in front of him. When the class began, he picked up a very large, empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks, approximately two inches in diameter. He then asked the students if the jar was full and they agreed that it was.
Next, he picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
So, he picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He again asked the students if the jar was full. They responded with a unanimous "yes".
The professor then produced two cans of beer from under the table and proceeded to pour their entire contents into the jar - effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.
As the laughter subsided, the professor said, "Now, I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The rocks are the important things - your family, your partner, your health, your children - things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car. The sand is everything else - the small stuff.
"If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out dancing. There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and fix the faucet. Take care of the rocks first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."
At that point, one of the students raised her hand and asked what the beer represented.
Smiling, the professor replied, "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of beers."
ID: 17440
College
Instructions: Read each question carefully. Answer all questions.
Time limit: 2 hours. Begin immediately.
Art: Given one eight-count box of crayons and three sheets of notebook paper, recreate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Skin tones should be true to life.
Biology: Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture if this form of life had developed 500 million years earlier, with special attention to its probable effect on the English Parliamentary System circa 1750. Prove your thesis.
Chemistry: You must identify a poison sample which you will find at your lab table. All necessary equipment has been provided. There are two beakers at your desk, one of which holds the antidote. If the wrong substance is used, it causes instant death. You may begin as soon as the professor injects you with a sample of the poison. (We feel this will give you an incentive to find the correct answer.)
Civil Engineering: This is a practical test of your design and building skills. With the boxes of toothpicks and glue present, build a platform that will support your weight when you and your platform are suspended over a vat of nitric acid.
Computer Science: Write a fifth-generation computer language. Using this language, write a computer program to finish the rest of this exam for you.
Economics: Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt. Trace the possible effects of your plan in the following areas: Cubism, the Donatist Controversy and the Wave Theory of Light. Outline a method for preventing these effects. Criticize this method from all possible points of view. Point out the deficiencies in your point of view, as demonstrated in your answer to the last question.
Electrical Engineering: You will be placed in a nuclear reactor and given a partial copy of the electrical layout. The electrical system has been tampered with. You have seventeen minutes to find the problem and correct it before the reactor melts down.
Engineering: The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle have been placed on your desk. You will also find an instruction manual, printed in Swahili. In 10 minutes, a hungry bengal tiger will be admitted to the room. Take whatever action you feel necessary. Be prepared to justify your decision.
Epistemology: Take a position for or against truth. Prove the validity of your stand.
General Knowledge: Describe in detail. Be objective and specific.
History: Describe the history of the Papacy from its origins to the present day, concentrating especially, but not exclusively, on its Europe, Asia, America and Africa. Be brief, concise and specific.
Mathematics: Derive the Euler-Cauchy equations using only a straightedge and compass. Discuss in detail the role these equations had on mathematical analysis in Europe during the 1800s.
Medicine: You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of scotch. Remove your appendix. Do not suture until you work has been inspected. You have fifteen minutes.
Metaphysics: Describe in detail the probably nature of life after death. Test your hypothesis.
Music: Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate and perform it with flute and drum. You will find a piano under your seat.
Philosophy: Sketch the development of human thought. Estimate its significance. Compare with the development of any other kind of thought.
Physchology: Based on your knowledge of their works, evaluate the emotional stability, degree of adjustment, and repressed frustrations of each of the following: Alexander of Aphrodisis, Rameses II, Hammuarabi. Support your evaluation with quotations from each man's work, making appropriate references. It is not necessary to translate.
Physics: Explain the nature of matter. Include in your answer an evaluation of the impact of the development of mathematics on science.
Political Science: There is a red telephone on the desk beside you. Start World War III. Report at length on its socio-political effects if any.
Public Speaking: 2500 riot-crazed aborigines are storming the classroom. Calm them. You may use any ancient language except Latin or Greek.
Religion: Perform a miracle. Creativity will be judged.
Sociology: Estimate the sociological problems which might accompany the end of the world. Construct an experiment to test your theory.
Extra Credit I: Define the universe, and give three examples.
Extra Credit II: Rewrite the exam on parchment with a quill, and do all practical projects as if you lived in the Middle Ages.
ID: 12590
College
Here is a collection of freshman history bloopers collected by a Canadian history professor (Anders Henrickson) over the years.
During the Middle Ages, everybody was middle aged. Church and state were cooperatic. Middle Evil society was made up of monks, lords and surfs. It is unfortunate that we do not have a medivel European laid out on a table before us, ready for dissection.
After a revival of infantile commerce slowly creeoed into Europe, merchants appeared. Some were sitters and some were drifters. They roamed from town to town exposing themselves and organized big fairies in the countryside.
Mideval people were violent. Murder during this Period was nothing. Everybody killed someone. England fought numerously for land in France and ended up wining and losing. The Crusades were a series of military expaditions made by Christians seeking to free the holy land (the "Home Town" of Christ) from the Islams.
In the 1400 hundreds most Englishmen were perpendicular. A class of yeowls arose. Finally Europe caught the Black Death. The bubonic plague is a social disease in the sense that it can be transmitted by intercourse and other etceteras. It was spread from port to port by infected rats. Victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. The plague also helped the emergance of the English language as the national language of England, France and Italy.
The Middle Ages slimpared to a halt. The renasence bolted in from the blue. Life reeked with joy. Italy became robust, and more individuals felt the value of their human being. Italy, of course, was much closer to the rest of the world thanks to Northern Europe. Man was determined to civilise himself and his brothers, even if heads had to roll! It became sheik to be educated. Art was on a more associated level. Europe was full of incredable churches with great art bulging out of their doors. Renaissance merchants were beautiful and almost lifelike.
The Reformnation happened when German nobles resented the idea that tithes were going to Papal France or the Pope, thus enriching Catholic coiffures. Traditions had become oppressive so they too were crushed in the wake of man's quest for ressurection above the not-just-social beast he had become. An angry Martin Luther nailed 95 theocrats to a church door. Theologically, Luthar was into reorientation mutation. Calvinism was the most convenient religion since the days of the ancients. Anabaptist services tended to be migratory. The Popes, of course, were usually Catholic. Monks went right on seeing themselves as worms. The last Jesuit priest died in the 19th century.
ID: 15187
College
Having just graduated from Harvard, the young man was very excited thinking about his future. Getting into a taxi, the driver says to him, "How are you on this beautiful, sunny day?"
"I'm the class of 2006. I just graduated from Harvard and I'm very excited about getting out there and seeing what the world has in store for me!"
The driver shakes the young man's hand and replies, "Congratulations, young man. I'm George, class of 1968."
ID: 13216
College
The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not flunk;
He keepeth me from lying down when I should be studying.
He leadeth me beside the water cooler for a study break;
He restoreth my faith in study guides.
He leads me to better study habits
For my grades sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of borderline grades,
I will not have a nervous breakdown;
For thou art with me.
My prayers and my friends, they comfort me.
Thou givest me answers in moments of blankness;
Thou anointest my head with understanding.
My test paper runneth over with questions I recognize.
Surely passing grades and flying colors shall follow me
All the days of my examinations,
And I shall not have to dwell in this university forever,
Amen!
ID: 17421
College
If only DEAD people understand hexadecimal, how many people understand hexadecimal?
57005.
ID: 12596
College
The theory of evolution was greatly objected to because it made man think.
Three kinds of blood vessels are arteries, vanes and caterpillers.
The dodo is a bird that is almost decent by now.
To remove air from a flask, fill it with water, tip the water out, and put the cork in quick before the air can get back in.
The process of turning steam back into water again is called conversation.
A magnet is something you find crawling all over a dead cat.
The Earth makes one resolution every 24 hours.
The cuckoo bird does not lay his own eggs.
To collect fumes of sulfur, hold a deacon over a flame in a test tube.
Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them.
Algebraical symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about.
Geometry teaches us to bisex angles.
A circle is a line which meets its other end without ending.
The pistol of a flower is its only protection against insects.
ID: 14143
College
Each simile listed below was actually used by high school students in their various essays and short stories:
He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and "Jeopardy" comes on at 7 P.M. instead of 7:30.
Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.
Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie, this guy would be buried in the credits as something like "second tall man."
Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers race across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 P.M. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 P.M. at a speed of 35 mph.
The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr. Pepper can.
They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.
The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free
ID: 16114
College
Subject: Students' rights during examinations
Here is a true story someone found regarding exams at Cambridge University. It seems that during an examination one day a bright young student popped up and asked the proctor to bring him Cakes and Ale. The following dialog ensued:
Proctor: I beg your pardon?
Student: Sir, I request that you bring me Cakes and Ale.
Proctor: Sorry, no.
Student: Sir, I really must insist. I request and require that you bring me Cakes and Ale.
At this point, the student produced a copy of the four hundred year old Laws of Cambridge, written in Latin and still nominally in effect, and pointed to the section which read (rough translation from the Latin):
"Gentlemen sitting examinations may request and require Cakes and Ale".
Pepsi and hamburgers were judged the modern equivalent, and the student sat there, writing his examination and happily slurping away.
Three weeks later the student was fined five pounds for not wearing a sword to the examination.
+10,000 Jokes