自考英语综合一下册课文 lesson 12
Text Got My B.A.by Sheer Luck
NOW IT CAN BE TOLD:I got my B.A.by sheer luck.Here is my story.
Professor Kolb was especially difficult that year.
Exactly 63.6 percent of the class failed Egyptian History.
And if it were not for sheer luck,I'd have raised the percentage to 65.4.
I remember most vividly the frightening pace of the lectures.
No one could take notes as fast as"Old Kolb"talked.
I usually missed more than half of each lecture.
Without complete notes,in was impossible to study.
I was lucky to have gotten even the 38 in one exam.
I knew that my only chance for survival was to get fuller notes.
That night after the exam grades came out,I thought over my disgraceful grade.
Suddenly I hit upon an idea:
Why not leave every other line on my note paper blank?
Then I could recall the lecture afterward and fill in the missing parts.
The next day I tried this plan and it worked!What luck!
At first it was difficult to recall the lecture,
but as days passed,it became sort of a game.
Often in my room I would imitate the professor
and try to give the lecture as best as I could without looking at my notes.
One evening while reciting the day's lecture to myself,
I made an important discovery.
In trying to make my presentation as smooth as possible,
I used the transitional words
"Now that we have discussed the major reason for the success of Pharaoh Hophra,
let us look at the minor reasons."
At that moment I stopped still,
for at no time did the professor
ever cut up the lecture into topics and subtopics
however,the topics and subtopics were there,waiting to be discovered,
With this secret in mind,
I found that I could take better notes during the lecture,
and after class I could very easily supply the missing parts.
An incident finally convinced me of my intellectual inferiority
when I found that the other students just"flipped the pages"of the textbook.
But poor me,I had to work on each chapter for hours.
I was lucky when,looking in the library for a book on Egyptian religion,
I ran across a whole shelf filled with books on Egypt.
I spent the rest of the day until 10:00 p.m.(closing time)reading.
I finally picked out three books which were easy enough for me to understand,
and I took these back to my room.
By first reading these books,
I found I could understand better the assigned chapter in the textbook.
So with luck I solved the textbook problem.
There I was,as the final examination approached,
with a note-book about two inches thick,filled with lecture notes.
Now,was I to memorize all these notes?And the textbook?
Realizing that I couldn't memorize everything in my notes,
I decided to review each lecture with one thought in mind:
"What is the really important idea here?"
As I found the answer,
I'd jot the central point on separate sheets which I called"Summary Sheets."
When I finished,
I had reduced inches of lecture notes to just twelve pages of "main issues."
I then did the same with my textbook.
I learned these main issues by first reading them over,thinking about them,
then without looking at my notes,by trying to recite them in my own words.
I went through my summary sheets in the same way,issue by issue.
Having mastered these main issues,I composed ten questions,
questions that I'd ask if I were the professor.
I pretended that I was in the examination room,
and I spent the next four hours answering my ten questions.
I then corrected my answers by referring to the lecture and the textbook notes,
and much to my delight,I had discussed all the facts and ideas accurately.
For the first time I felt that I had achieved something.
I went to bed at 10:00 for a good night's sleep,
having refused to go to a movie with the rest of the boys.
On the way to the examination room the next morning,
I knew without question that my luck had run out when I met Jack,
who sat next to me.
He had not taken a single note all semester;
he had not even"flipped"the textbook pages.
When I asked why he wasn't nervous,he answered,
"This is the semester for Examination Set #4."
"What's Examination Set #4?"
Everybody on campus except me,I guess,
knew that"Old Kolb"had five sets of examinations(ten questions in every set),
which he used in turn over a five-year period.
Though"Old Kolb"collected the question sheets from each student,
he underestimated their organizing ability.
The plan worked like this:
Some students were given the task to memorize question #1,
another group to memorize #2,and so forth.
When the students left the examination room
they jotted down these questions quickly from memory.
In this way they finally collected all five sets of the examination.
I knew my luck had run out.As the examination sheets were passed out,
I heard moans of various kinds:"Oh,No!""No!"and hysterical laughter.
I thought that perhaps the professor
had by mistake given out Exam #5 instead of the expected #4.
By the time the sheets reached me,I,too,gasped,"Oh!It can't be."
They were the same ten questions that I had made up only yesterday!
How could that be?One chance in a million,I'm sure.I wrote and wrote and wrote.
"Old Kolb'gave me a 100 plus.He wrote a note saying,
'Thank goodness for one good scholar in all my years of teaching."
But he didn't know what luck I had,and I never told him.
Now that twenty years have passed,
I think that it is safe to reveal
that here is one fellow who got his B.A.by sheer luck.
