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.]