You have three hours to complete the exam. Use as many pages as necessary and write neatly. Double space your work where appropriate. The use of electronic devices is not allowed. Silence all cell phones now. After turning in your exam, please help yourself to a cupcake and have a wonderful winter break.
- If every year hippos kill more humans than sharks do, why hasn’t anyone decided to eat them? Develop a recipe for a four-serving entrée using 2 cups of cubed hippo meat and a variety of Botswana herbs.
- If the square root of pain is being wrong, what is the cosine of being annoying?
- What was in that bite of sandwich you spit out at the picnic last summer? Use sensory details and describe the contents in the style of a.) Octavio Paz, b.) Christina Rossetti, and c.) Andre Codrescu. Punctuation optional.
- Using inference, determine which is a more appropriate form of group expression at a Polish-Afghani wedding in Brooklyn: the hokey pokey, the chicken dance, the YMCA, or the Hora. Show your work.
- Describe, in linear detail, the contents of your backpack, beginning with the crumbs at the bottom of the main compartment. Do not include candy wrappers.
- Justify your life.
- Using echolocation, identify a bountiful supply of miller moths above the river in the park in December. If you cannot complete this assignment successfully, hibernate.
- On the provided 8½” X 11” piece of blue paper, draw a Venn diagram illustrating all the ways that we humans are different, all the ways that we are the same, and all the justifications we use to kill each other. Use no more than 3 circles and write in blood.
Good luck and watch the clock!
This poem appeared in the now-retired webzine Pure Francis in Dec. 2012. Much thanks to Francis, dapper connoisseur of crème soda and caviar. It was a great run.
This poem will also appear in the anthology How Higher Education Feels, edited by Kathleen Quinlan, in 2016.
