Oops! Your Participation Grade Is Actually 99%, and You’ve Barely Gone to Class! 5 Tips to Gaslight Your Instructor

You might be in trouble, but you are not entirely screwed! The soon-to-be defunded research and development team of the Shady Dealer is here with some helpful advice to save your grade! Please use these tips responsibly and under no circumstances tell anyone where you got them.  

1. Lie! Sure, it’s not the flashiest solution, but it sometimes sorta works. You could not come to class because: 
   • Your grandmother is dead! 
   • You would have missed your opportunity to join an experimental space launch!
   • The syllabus was written so masterfully, it rendered you unable to stand for many weeks!
   • Make sure to tailor your lies to the subject in question. For example, if your class is in the Theatre, English, or Classics departments, you could claim a soothsayer told you to avoid that specific building. For STEM, you could say the grant funding for your participation fell through, and you are looking for alternative means to finance it.
2. Wait until the participation grades come out, then become an Oscar-winning actor. After you get a zero, send several emails to your professor. “I don’t understand! I was present all day! You loved my point about Rousseau!” Produce character witnesses. Sign as many legal documents as possible. Appeal to the administration. Get some lawyers disbarred. You were at that class every single day saying something that not only repeated information from the readings, but synthesized it with stunning eloquence. 
3. Hire a student to steal your identity. Hang around the Logan Center until a down-on-their-luck University Theatre kid notices you. This isn’t even the most expensive option. Some of them might do it for the exposure. 
4. Go to class. 
5. Sorry about that, we had to put that last one in there in case your professor reads this. Instead try: begging. Some professors are moved by this. Some are heartless monsters that do not understand your need to be busy at the exact time of your class. 

If none of these work, we would like to issue a sincere apology. Our grandmother just died.