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  • 2001-04-14 (xsd:date)
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  • The Tale of the Anonymous Test Taker (en)
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  • The idea of showing up an authoritative figure with a remark or a trick has long been a satisfying device employed in literature. Take this case of a student and his extremely difficult professor. Author Jan Harold Brunvand documented several different versions of student tricks to achieve higher exam scores in the 1986 book: The Mexican Pet: More 'New' Urban Legends and Some Old Favorites. This particular story was credited to Cindy Burnham of Memphis, Tennessee, from August 1984: (ThoughtCo defines a blue book as literally a book with about 20 lined pages that college, graduate, and sometimes high school students use to answer test questions.) A different variation of the tale has the exam proctor telling the student that he'll probably flunk for continuing to write after time was called: A third version of the legend involves a classroom where a student did not engage in a form of cheating, but forgot to bring the student ID card required to turn in a finished exam: In some variations of the story, the student has to hide his identity because he's been caught cheating (usually by illicitly using notes). Other versions feature a ringer (a student paid to take the test on behalf of someone else) who obscures his identity when caught to cover for the student who hired him. Yet another story of the same tale has a professor giving the exam who can't identify the cheating student because the class is very large, and he therefore doesn't know every student by sight. Finally, another variation has the test being given by a proctor who isn't familiar with any of the test-takers. This is one of two common collegiate legends along with the The Tale of the Bird Foot Exam, whose key element is the anonymity of students to their instructors. In this tale, as author Simon J. Bronner says, the cheater in essence punishes the teacher for his lack of attention in such a large class. This story has often been told as a joke, set in situations (such as the military) where a superior has authority over a large number of faceless underlings, or any situation involving a large gathering of people. One example of the latter is the following, from a 1950 joke book: A dramatization of this legend was used in an advertisement for Instant Kiwi, part of the lottery games in New Zealand: It also appears in the 2002 film Slackers: (en)
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