Spanish Homework

Here we have two assignments from a Spanish workbook. Both were submitted by a fellow named John, and this is not his first appearance here.

In the first, which was an in-class assignment, he records his name both as "Don Juan" and "Puff Padre" (no doubt both an homage to the artist formerly known as Puff Daddy and a reference to his penchant for smoking alternative tobaccos). He completes the assignment (sloppily, but at least legibly), but in the margins he spends his extra time doodling - here a shaggy face, there an amoeba. On the right-hand side there is a rather boxy depiction of a cow (we know it's a bovine only because it is mooing), and the grader remarks, "This indicates playing around during class = unacceptable behavior". You tell 'em!

The second assignment was one he completely forgot about until the teacher started walking around desks to collect it. He did what any resourceful student would do: in the remaining seconds he had, he drew squiggly lines all over the page. The teacher hilariously replies, "¿What?"

Horror Story

The product of a tenth-grade creative writing assignment, this unfinished thriller was a split-setting parable about a post-nuclear wasteland, ostensibly with the conceit that the loner and the group would eventually unite. While the story makes no explicit references, there are shades of DOOM here, in structure and spirit. The male characters are depictions of students - the one, a thinly-disguised portrait of a class eccentric, and the other, a rakish, clowning fellow named John Manzella. (The part about "Boyzella" was inspired by actual events; he was called this by the school principal after a public bout of mischief.) I have no idea who Donna and Yusuke are. The writing was done in two installments, hence the two half-pages - and the two different, all-caps-lock fonts, which add to the dramatic tension.

AP Government Quiz

These three rather dismal quizzes come from an AP Government & Politics course offered to seniors. I have no idea what the first question was, because every one of the respondents was so off the mark I can't cobble together what they must have been responding to. It probably had something to do with the abolition of some federal program. The second question, I believe, was "What program was passed along with Medicare in 1965?" and the third was "What program replaced AFDC in 1996?".

That most-represented star of the Archives, Travis, appears here again. (I should note that Travis and I were not the closest of friends in school. It's not that he was constantly feeding me his daily doings as best-chums; it's that he kept making an ass of himself on paper, over and over, and subsequently generating such laughs among his peers that I would inevitably be handed the work for safekeeping.) He only got the third question right; he was simply off the mark on the second question, and to the first question, he responds tersely, "FDR, because he no likey".

Erika had a lot of trouble recalling the acronym of the government program which superseded Aid to Families with Dependent Children in 1996; the real acronym is TANF (for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). Erika scribbles out NABF at the top of the page, tests out NAFR again at the top, then tries out simply NAF before settling on NARF, a catch-all interjection from the TV show Pinky and the Brain (and one that we used locally as a synonym for "barf" or "snarf"). She also did a humorous two-step over the time when aid recipients in NARF must obtain jobs. Her answer for #3 is transcribed below.

3. NAF NARF (not neccesarily [sic] in that order), it allowed for aid to poor families. It would only last for five years. Those recieving [sic] aid must get a job after before after between the time they start aid and the second year and must keep it. After those 5 years no more aid is given unless thier [sic] are extenuating circumstances.


Ollie (of Catcher in the Rye fame) also had trouble with the acronym, coming up with TEDF and TADF, but his real contribution was in his answer for question 1, which is transcribed below the image.

1. Bert and Ernie halted Medicare because Big Bird was not given enough benefits. Myguess is George Bush because he felt costs would be too high

Ancient Roman Art

We'll conclude our Latin series with two pieces of visual art drawn by aesthetically precocious middle schoolers. The medium of both works is pencil on copy paper.

The first, by Nimish, is a drawing of Hercules carrying out the Labor of the Cretan Bull. Instead of the great hero wrestling the bull to the ground, though, he is depicted as a cigar-chomping, fatigues-sporting Rambo toting a fully automatic weapon, which he uses to direct a stream of bullets at the (now fire-breathing) bovine. The bull responds with a tender "ouch", as the jets of flame emanating from his nostrils fail to reach Hercules but succeed in searing a few shrimp on a nearby barbie.

The second is a collaborative effort by the fertile minds of Adam and Travis, who laid out an elaborate strip comic in order to make a cross-linguistic pun about "spanking the monkey". The monkey, in this case, played by Diddy Kong. Full credits are given for the work, including, for unknown reasons, inspiration by Coolio. Translations of the captions follow below. This image is copyrighted; all rights are reserved, and the work may not be used for commercial purposes or reproduced in any way without the express written consent of Mackhouse Productions, Inc.

1: While Marcus sleeps in the house, his chariot is in the road.
2: A monkey approaches the chariot.
3: The monkey climbs into the chariot.
4: The monkey drives the chariot on the road.
5: Marcus hears a great noise and gets up.
6: Marcus sees the monkey and runs to the chariot.
7: Marcus spanks the monkey and scolds it.

Quiz #7

Our perennial star Travis returns yet again with his lackluster Quiz #7, clocking in at a failing 48%. There's a spot in the translation section where he takes the phrase "effusum est oleum in strata" and renders it "the effusum is oleum in strata"; perhaps he thought he might confuse the teacher into thinking it really was English. The best part, however, is the grading comment at the bottom of the page: "Travis, you have done no homework for two weeks, and now you get the lowest grade you've ever gotten. Do you see the connection??"

 He expressed his own frustrations on the back, with another occurrence of the inscrutable local term of abuse "bash zool":

Ovid Quiz 3

If memory serves, the follow-up to Quiz 2 went better for most of us. The exception was Adam, who decorated his quiz in even more gaudy ways than on the previous one. At the top of the page, he writes "illigitimas non caparundum est" (which is close to, but not exactly, "don't let the bastards grind you down"), identifies himself as "Adam a.k.a. Bacchus" (the Roman god of being drunk and disorderly) and frames the name "Ovid" with a skull and crossbones.

The real treat is in the lower translation section. You'll note that Adam has drawn a tank firing off a shell, and the reason he was able to do so is that he probably had rather a lot of free time on his hands after completing this section. Our teacher had given us a chunk of Ovid beforehand, and told us that we would need to translate some sections of it for this quiz. Adam, along with several other students in the class, decided that Ovid's Latin was too difficult to translate on the fly, so they took to memorizing the passage translations. This strategy worked well for most, but Adam misidentified the section and ended up regurgitating something completely different. The teacher notes, "Wrong section - at least look at the Latin!"

On the flipside, he created another stunning work in the DOOM series, this time with a depiction of the video game's nameless hero:

Ovid Quiz II

If Vocab Quiz 2 was a catastrophe, Ovid Quiz II was an outright massacre. Or so we convinced ourselves as we took it. The members of the class were so convinced they were going to fail from the start that the taking of the quiz itself became an open joke as it was happening. Silence was breached repeatedly, and when the teacher demanded order, students began drawing on the backs of the tests and holding up the signs they were making, almost invariably making reference to the grandaddy of the Archives, the legendary student essay "DOOM" (and it is well worth your time to review that opus before continuing on to the quizzes below).

I collected five of the quizzes from classmates, each of which is precious enough to deserve discussion separately.


First we'll have the quiz of Travis (if you've been paying attention, you've surely noticed Travis was rather a star here at the Archives). Things don't look so bad for him on page 1 - "good translations", the teacher notes. So far, so good.

Proceeding to page 2, we find that Travis is losing steam. Unsure of the declension of "mittere", he begins filling in "DOOM" as an answer instead of guessing, with his script becoming more and more dire-looking as he progresses.

On the final page, he surrenders to the last question with the plausible-sounding but bleak answer of "Misery!!!"

That's not all for Travis, however. It was he, mischievous soul, who began surreptitiously drawing block letters on the blank back of a quiz page and holding the paper up for the other classmates to see:

Once he got some other kids in the game, he beautified the backside of the other pages as well:

Josh's quiz is up next. His is notable chiefly for four things: having a lot of red ink on it, writing "!!MORTUUS!!" (Death!) at the top of the page, not even bothering with most of the translation section, and - best of all - continuing with the DOOM series, adding "DOOM 64" (or "BOOM 64"?) to the garden of backpage delights.

 Chris's quiz brought DOOM to the teacher, referring to himself as "Chris AKA DOOM" in the name field and adding a DOOM border to the edges of the first page. He also got a "What??" from the teacher for translating "turba ruit" as "turbans unravel" (it means "the crowd hurried") and added "Final DOOM" to the backpage series.

Andrew, by contrast, looked more nerve-wracked by the whole affair than anything else, scrawling "Q-tips" for no discernible reason in the middle of the first page. (Also, toward the bottom, the teacher finishes a sentence for him and then gives him credit for the answer!) "DOOM" also makes a withered appearance at the end of his third page (though on the front of it).

We'll end with Adam's quiz. At the top of the first page, he boldly quotes one of the most famous lines of the original DOOM story: "DOOM!!!? he whispered." - to which the teacher responds, "Study! she shouted." Lacking confidence in his first answer, he ends it with a bubble-lettered DOOM!! as well. The second page is unremarkable, but fatigue had set in by the third page, in which he stops answering with words and starts answering with numbers. The teacher inquires, "Is this a football game?" No, ma'am. It was DOOM!!!

Vocabulary Quiz 2

Vocabulary Quiz 2 was a catastrophe. The ninth-grade Latin II class was utterly unprepared for this pop quiz, so much so that seven of the nine class members outright failed it. One knew he was failing it, and started filling in blanks with things like "DEATH BY STRANGULATION"; another took out frustrations by frantically scribbling out a list of known and invented nicknames for himself - "Andrew, Dyo, Maximus, Anonymous, Chris Farley, the freak, the guy with too much hair, the monster, Hans, Tuba, Hainey's Twin, Treetruncks". It was an ugly day for all, save the nerd that got the 93%.

Somehow, I managed to procure seven of the quizzes after grading; they were so bad almost no one wanted to keep them for study. I did manage to get to see the other two, though their tight-fisted owners wouldn't part with them; one was a C and the other was an F. They are ordered below from best to worst.

Tormentum Secundum

We'll start with the eighth-grade "Tormentum Secundum", a quiz taken by a student who identifies himself as last-name Neff (truthful), first-name Marlofuisti (apparently a botched Latinization of his classmate Marlow's name).

When asked to translate the sentence in the second question, he gets the first two words right, then leaves he rest blank; perhaps not the most reprehensible of errors, but the teacher saw fit to present the grading rather harshly...by stringing together eight bubbles indicating the eight words that are missing.

On the second page, Marlofuisti didn't have much luck working out the declension of the noun risus, Latin for "laughter". Rather than run a random scatter pattern, he instead just guessed "Rei" for virtually every answer he didn't know. Well, he did get one right...

Somehow the efforts still merited a 13/20, technically a passing grade.

Latin Class: An Introduction

The institution that framed these brilliant creative offerings sought, with half its heart, to instill in its students an understanding and love of the classics. To that end, it offered two years' worth of Latin study, then demanded the students abandon the language for something more useful (French, Spanish). Latin class became prime seeding ground for Archival material, because it was loaded with goofballs, class clowns, and people who quietly got on with the business of studying not a whit. The instructors were patient and good-natured, for the most part recognizing that this was behavior to be contained rather than stopped. It could even be said that, once in a while, they got into the act, as with this (censored) sheet of Latin invectives given as a handout:

Giving this list to a classroom of seventh-grade boys is like floating your Cincinnati fire kite at the local propane factory. Who doesn't want to call a teacher a "contributor to the delinquency of minors" - in Latin?

 Perhaps more shocking is this Catullus poem, given to the ninth-grade Latin II class as a translation exercise:

Our awkward class translation gave the following reading:

"O what a ridiculous thing, Cato, and funny,
And worthy of gold and your laughter!
You like to laugh at Catullus, Cato, to the extent that
The thing is ridiculous and too funny.
I just caught a toy-boy thrusting into a girl;
I struck, if it pleases Aphrodite,
With my rigid one to form a team."

Sex-ed class wasn't for another two years, but ours was a typically randy school, and so perhaps it is best that we had the Ancients to teach us the finer points on birds and bees.

To follow over the next several weeks is a long series of Latin-related triumphs and catastrophes, mostly the latter. Updates to follow presently!

I bet this was a lot funnier when we were in eighth grade.

...And maybe that's true of a lot of things here.

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Two class quizzes on John Keats's poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn" follow. Apparently both of these students felt confident enough in their grades to blow the last question and make up their own decidedly dark revisions of the poem's famous last couplet. The question asks of them, "Finish this statement however you'd like", and they took it at face value. The real line is "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know'"; the students' lines are, well...somewhat less idyllic.

The rest of the quizzes are mostly uninteresting; just skip to the last lines. They are retyped below each image.

Beauty is Murder, Murder beauty - that is all ye know on Cell Block 6, and all ye want to do.

Beauty is Disgusting, I Hate beauty - that is all ye know on Crack, and all ye Try to Think.

Allen Ginsberg Quiz

Test your knowledge! Find out how much you know about Allen Ginsberg - and how little these two students did! Was he a part of the Bolshevik Revolution, or the Peace Movement? Was he a contemporary of Yeats, or Wordsworth? Transcriptions below.

1. Bolshevik Revolution
2, 3. [no answer]
4, 5. [no answer]
6, 7, 8. [no answer]
9. Yeats
10. Russia
Bonus: -Used theme of love in writing [teacher comment: Kind of.]

1. Romanticism Peace Movement
2, 3. Yeats, Wordsworth
4, 5. "From Howl Howl" and "To Aunt Rose" [ed. comment: He was likely reading an excerpted version of the poem, which was labeled "from Howl". He was still given full credit for this answer.]
6, 7, 8. World War II / Spanish Civil War / World War I [unintelligible]
9. Fant[?] Wordsworth
10. England
Bonus: He was born in 1926 and is still alive today. [ed. comment: He was indeed born in 1926, but he had died a year or two before this quiz was administered.]