The Final Exam
Before answering each question, provide a topic heading. Observe standard rules of grammar. Answer each question in detail. Time limit is 4 hours. Use additional sheets if necessary.
ART: Repaint the Sistine Chapel, and write an essay on how it affects how the Pope looks in the morning.
ASTRONOMY: Create a second Big Bang. Discuss the effects of inflation on the new universe, and predict its fate based on its mass density.
BIOLOGY: Create life. Estimate the difference in present human culture if your life form had developed 500 million years earlier, paying special attention to its probably effects on the English Parliamentary System. Prove your thesis.
ECONOMICS: Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt. Trace possible effects of your plan in the following areas: Cubism, the Domatist controversy, the wave theory of light. Outline a method for preventing these effects. Criticize this method, then point out the deficiencies in your criticism.
EDUCATION: There will be no exam, but you will be sent to Arkansas to teach in an elementary school.
ENGINEERING: The disassembled parts of a high powered rifle have been placed in a small box on your desk, with an instruction manual printed in Swahili. In ten minutes a hungry Bengal tiger will be admitted to the room. Take appropriate action and be prepared to justify your decision.
EPISTEMOLOGY: Take a position for or against truth. Prove your position.
EXTRA CREDIT: Define the universe. Give three examples.
GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: Describe in detail. Be objective and specific.
GENETICS: Create life, play God, write a thesis and dissertation on the dangers of playing God. Kill your creature after it mates with your lab partner.
HISTORY: Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present day, concentrating especially but not exclusively on its social, political, economic, religious, and philosophical impact on Europe, Asia, America, and Africa. Be brief, concise, and specific.
LITERATURE: Compose an epic poem based on the events of your own life in which you use and footnote allusions from T.S. Eliot, Keats, Chaucer, Dante, Norse mythology and the Marx Brothers. Critique your poem with a full discussion of its metrics.
MATHEMATICS: Prove rigorously that 1+1=2. Discuss the implications of Godel's Theorem for the result.
MEDICINE: You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch. You are to remove your appendix. Describe the procedure; then do it. Have your work inspected before suturing.
MUSIC: Theory and Musicianship: Write an opera in Italian, translate it to German, perform it in French, and finally, write an essay on why all music publishers should be shot.
MUSIC: Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate and perform it using flute and drum.
PERFORMANCE: Play the entire score of Wagner's Symphony Number 7. By yourself.
PHILOSOPHY: Sketch the development of human thought and estimate its significance. Compare this with the development of another thought.
PHYSICS: Explain the nature of matter. Include in your answer an evaluation of the impact of the development of math on science.
PHYSICS: Derive a consistent theory of quantum gravity. Discuss its implications for the Hawking process, gravity waves, and the fate of the universe.
PHYSICS LAB: Build a machine that can travel back in time. Discuss the effects of the average weak energy condition and the causal ordering postulate on your design. Travel back in time and kill your mother as an infant. Report at length on the results.
POLITICAL SCIENCE: There is a red telephone on your desk; start World War III. Describe the social-political effects, if any.
PSYCHOLOGY: Based on your knowledge of their works, evaluate the emotional stability, degree of adjustment, and repressed frustration of each of the following: Alexander of Aphrodisias, Ramses II, Gregory of Nicea, Hammurabi. Support your evaluation with quotations from each man's works, making appropriate references. It is not necessary to translate.
PSYCHOLOGY: Diagnose yourself with a mental deficiency, role play it, acting out all aggression, go on a killing spree across the Mid-West, and finally, write an essay about the dangers of false psychiatrists in your life term in prison. Don't worry, we'll send the degree to your next of kin.
PUBLIC SPEAKING: Two thousand riot-crazed people are storming the classroom. You must calm them using any ancient language except Greek.
SOCIOLOGY: Estimate the sociological problems which might accompany the end of the world. Construct an experiment to test your theory.
