EVANSTON—Jason Fisher, an NU Premed student, was shocked when his midterm paper, entitled “Finding the Cure for Cancer”, received a C grade from his professor, Jeffrey Malloy. The paper, which kept Fisher locked in his room for three sleepless nights until its completion, outlines a radical new method that, when applied to lab rats, was successfully able to cause remission of cancer-causing oncogenes. “To tell the truth,” a dreary-eyed Fisher lamented, “I thought the paper was pretty sick. I guess Professor Malloy had other ideas.”

Malloy, a notoriously hard grader, explained that Fisher’s paper, though “meeting his standards”, did not go “above and beyond” his midterm assignment. Malloy remarked simply, “I’ve seen better.” He later added on his initial stance, stating that, “Yeah, Mr. Fisher had some neat things to say, but after reading students who have claimed to cure AIDS and the common cold, cancer just seems so run-of-the-mill. Plus, he did not follow proper Chicago style, so that’s half a letter grade right there. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some grading to do.” Malloy then pulled out a red pen and began reading over a paper from another class entitled, “The Flying Car: Not a Myth Anymore.” He scowled and uncapped the pen, muttering “Oh dear, someone’s not going to be happy tomorrow.”

As for Fisher and the rest of his Premed 315 class, the only option is to move on and look ahead. “I think I might have discovered the secret to human immortality,” the McCormick junior explained, “and hopefully Malloy will give me at least a B- for that. I’m hoping we can develop a good relationship, because I’ll probably take some more classes with him. Perhaps ‘Screwing Over your GPA 201,’ I saw that one had pretty good CTECs.”

Fisher’s roommate, School of Communication major Adrian Swift, said that he felt bad that his friend didn’t receive a better grade. “I thought it was excellent. I mean, in my mad dash to complete an assignment I hadn’t done for my speech performance class, I just grabbed a draft of his paper and used that for my performance. It was pretty dull, but I got an A anyways. If I got an A, I think Jason deserved one too.”