BERKELEY, Calif. — “These are the worst scores I’ve seen in over seven years of teaching this course!” read a class announcement for Bio 1C, under which a precious, smiling Pomeranian Husky posed, sitting patiently amidst neatly trimmed blades of grass which grew barely long enough to hide the adorable puppy’s little white paws.
Beneath the jovial photo of the cute Pomsky was a stern notice that course staff had detected multiple cases of academic dishonesty on the midterm, along with several thinly veiled threats against students about “failing the class,” “a permanent infraction on the offender’s record,” and “immediate expulsion from the school.”
John Walker, a student who scored slightly below average on the midterm and is now at risk of failing the class, landing on academic probation, and permanently losing his financial aid spoke to us about this professor’s wholesome teaching style: “Once I saw that adorable doggy picture, all my worries just went away… At least until I realized that I’m one bad grade away from having to withdraw from school with an unfinished diploma, spending the rest of my days wondering how my entire life would’ve been different if that one Bio 1C midterm hadn’t asked us to experimentally derive a new evolutionary theory for how a hypothetical alien species would’ve developed on planet Kepler-51b of the Cygnus constellation.”
The Bio 1C professor has been reprimanded by the university’s biology department chairs. A press secretary for the school announced in yesterday’s public conference, “The professor displayed a serious lack of judgment and professionalism in his conduct. We are appalled that he didn’t choose a picture of a cuter breed, like a Corgi or Shiba Inu. Even a French Bulldog would’ve been better.”