Static Shocks and a Surprising Five Dollars
Two odd things stood out from an otherwise ordinary day. The first started with an email chain about the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a scenario-based critical-thinking test. The tips arrived with headings like "Be Specific" and "Be Skeptical," each starting with the letter B or S. When the fourth message arrived, the pattern broke: READ DIRECTIONS, with a note offering five dollars to anyone who could suggest a matching S-phrase.
TIP #4: READ DIRECTIONS ($5.00 extra to anyone who can come up with a version of this tip's name that starts with an “S”) Check that you’ve done what you’ve been asked to do. If you’re being asked to play a role, think about who you are suppose to be writing for. Don’t assume that your audience knows what you’re writing about.
I replied with a quick list of tongue-in-cheek options—"Satiate Curiosity," "Suppose Nothing," "Study Directions"—without expecting anything to come of it. A week later, an email arrived asking me to stop by the Dean's office. The five dollars, it turned out, were real.
The second incident happened in a CMC bathroom stall. While reading the graffiti (including "Kyia can't normalize a wave function" and similar), I shifted slightly to one side and felt a prickling sensation on my head. Moving around, it became clear there was a strong electrostatic gradient between the two plastic panels that formed the stall.
The likely cause: people brushing against one wall while removing their coats. That rubbing deposits a static charge on that panel, creating a significant potential difference from the other wall. Dry air made the effect stronger, and bringing a hand within a foot of the surface produced audible pops as the field broke down the surrounding air.
As for the formatting of the tips themselves—yes, the acronym seemed poorly chosen to me, too.
