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Oct. 17, 2017
UChicago has a long history of professors with big ideas. Every undergrad has heard at some point the story of Adam Stevens, the Chemistry professor who gave himself polio to motivate his students to find a cure. And Economics professor Richard Thaler recently won a nobel prize for his at the time morally gray experiments on the toad anatomy. However, one Hum professor is setting a new bench-mark in zaniness with his new mind-bending classroom policy.
Dr. Victor Fox, who insists that his students call him whatever they want (so long as its not “Doctor”), lets his students call the shots. “I recognize that students here are notoriously busy,” says Slick Vic, “and so at the beginning of every quarter I let my students vote for what week they want the midterm, provided its either 4th or 5th week.”
Did somebody say “Cool Professor”? Old VicDonald went on to say “If it were up to me, there wouldn’t be any grade at all, and so no midterm. But my hands are tied by the higher ups, so I instead let the students choose between a 4-date slate of possible midterm dates so that they can focus on it when the time comes.”
When we contacted the administration, a representative confirmed our suspicions. “Dr. Victor has been a thorn in our side for years with his cavalier teaching style. But what can I say? The students love him”
That’s for sure. We had no shortage of students, past and present, dying to endorse their beloved teacher. “Big Vic Vapor Rub is without a doubt the greatest teacher I’ve ever had. He just wants us to succeed, and that’s why a plurality of the class gets the pick of the litter in terms of when we have to take that pesky midterm,” said one current student.
A former student had more to say about the content of the midterm itself. “Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this, but he’ll ask questions like, “what’s your favorite UChicago café?”, because it has no wrong answers and he wants to give us free points.” He continued, chuckling “Except maybe Ex-Libris. Everyone knows Vic-Tac does not like setting foot in there.”
Clearly the banter is flowing every session. Sounds pretty cool, right?
While the jury is still out on whether such a cavalier policy is sustainable, one thing is for sure:
these students are in for an easy quarter.
