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1、I Got My B.A. by Sheer Luck _Walter Pauk Now it can be told: I got my B.A. by sheer luck. I say sheer luck because, if events were ordinary, I would have failed almost every course. Instead, when things looked impossible, some Chance idea pulled me out. Here is my story. Professor Kolb (the students
2、 called him King Tut) was especially rough that year. Some said that an editor had turned down his manuscript; others said that he was just tired of students. But whatever it was, exactly 63.6 percent of the class failed Egyptian History. And if it were not for sheer luck, Id have raised the percent
3、age to 65.4. I remember most vividly the frightening pace of the lectures. No one could take notes as fast as King Tut talked, especially when he became excited. My frantic scribbling and almost indecipherable abbreviating were so slow that I missed more than half. Without complete notes, it was imp
4、ossible to study. I was lucky to have gotten even the 38 on one exam. As the fellows used to say, the handwriting on the sarcophagus was clear for me. I knew that my only chance for survival was to get fuller notes. That night after the exam grades came out, I tried to fall asleepto forget my devast
5、ating grade for even awhilebut words like hieroglyphics and rosetta stone1 kept kaleidoscoping and rolling through my mind. As I mulled over my missing more than half of each lecture, I suddenly hit upon an idea: Why not leave every other line on my note paper blank Then during the following period
6、I could recall the lecture and fill in the missing portions. In deference to the ancients, I called this the Osiris Plan.2 The next day I tried the Osiris Plan, and it worked! What luck! At first it was difficult to recall the lecture, but as days passed, it became sort of a game. Often, in the priv
7、acy of my room I would, in softer voice, imitate the old professor and try to redeliver the lecture as best as I could without looking at my notes. This mimicry almost got me into trouble, when, on a rare occasion, the professor called on me to answer a question. Stunned by being called, I jumped to
8、 my feet and for the first two sentences, before I caught myself, the fellows said I sounded exactly like Old Tut. One evening while quietly reciting the days lecture to myself, I made an important discovery. In trying to make my presentation as smooth as possible (about this time I had begun imagin
9、ing that I was a lecturer), I used the transitional words Now that we have discussed the major reason for the phenomenal success of Pharaoh Hophra, let us look at the subsidiary reasons. At that moment I stopped still, for at no time did the professor ever cut up the lecture into topics and subtopic
10、s; nevertheless, the topics and subtopics were neatly packaged and embedded into the seeming onrush of words, waiting to be perceived by the student. With this secret in mind, I found that I could take better notes during the lecture, and during the periods after class I could very easily supply the
11、 missing portions, filling in the blank every-other-line. I tried to share this find with other students, but theyd always say, Youre foolish to take all those notes. Just sit back and listen. Although this sounded too easy to be good advice, I was struck by the great intelligence of my fellow stude
12、nts who could remember the main ideas of lecture after lecture, just by listening. I knew I couldnt; so to hide my inferior intelligence, I continued taking notes, completing them directly after class, categorizing the ideas, supplying the titles and subtitles, and reciting the lectures. Another inc
13、ident finally convinced me of my intellectual inferiority when I found that the other students just flipped the pages of the textbook. But poor me, I had to work on each chapter for hours. It was only luck that I wasnt found out, because the professor never quizzed us on our reading; everything depe
14、nded on the final exam. I was luckier still when, looking in the library stacks for a book on Egyptian religion, I ran across an entire shelf filled with books on Egypt. I spent the rest of the day until 10:00 P.M. (closing time) perusing this lucky find. I finally picked out three books which were
15、written in a style easy enough for me to understand, and I took these back to my room. By first reading these extra books, I found I could come back to the assigned chapter in the textbook and understand it better. I noticed that the author of our textbook frequently referred by footnote to these li
16、brary books. So with luck I solved the textbook problem. Well, all of this simply led up to the final examination. There I was with a notebook, about two inches thick, filled with lecture notes. Now, was I to memorize all these notes for the exam. And the textbook Realizing that I didnt have the brains to memorize everything in my notes, I decided (this time wi
