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!!!