# Attention scientists and students!! You will be able to sympathize. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 22, 2001, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-scientists-and-students-you-will-be-able-to-sympathize/55425 "2001-02-22T04:25:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2001, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-scientists-and-students-you-will-be-able-to-sympathize/55425/1 "2001-02-22T04:25:16Z")
[This](http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~kovar/hall.html) is supposedly an actual lab report turned in by a frustrated physics undergrad. It’s hysterical. And I, with my one-class-away-from-a-BS-in-microbiology status, understood _exactly_ how he felt. Man, but I wish I had the guts to turn in something like that. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2001, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-scientists-and-students-you-will-be-able-to-sympathize/55425/2 "2001-02-22T04:34:54Z")
Oh God, that was great! I know precisely how the poor schmuck feels, too. I’m not quite prepared to believe that it’s genuine, but it’s still a great lab report. I’ve had organic chemistry labs that were such unmitigated disasters that I wanted to write something like this, but I just got wasted instead. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![big\_yellow\_kingswood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e8cbc/32.png) [@big\_yellow\_kingswood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/big_yellow_kingswood)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2001, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-scientists-and-students-you-will-be-able-to-sympathize/55425/3 "2001-02-22T04:36:21Z")
My boss just asked me what was so funny. I couldn’t think of anything to tell him. Now I’m in trouble. Thanks, Smeghead. ---
**Author:** ![deb2world](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7cd45c/32.png) [@deb2world](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deb2world)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2001, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-scientists-and-students-you-will-be-able-to-sympathize/55425/4 "2001-02-22T04:51:52Z")
That was hilarious. I love his results. hehe. ---
**Author:** ![Tie-Dye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8c91f0/32.png) [@Tie-Dye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tie-Dye)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2001, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-scientists-and-students-you-will-be-able-to-sympathize/55425/5 "2001-02-22T06:21:46Z")
That’s great! Wish I could have turned in something like that last week. I had a lab that didn’t work at all, luckily the prof let us just show that we tried to analyze it with his programs, but it bugged the crap out of me. I can certainly sympathize. ---
**Author:** ![Sue\_Duhnym](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/91b2a8/32.png) [@Sue\_Duhnym](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sue_Duhnym)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2001, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-scientists-and-students-you-will-be-able-to-sympathize/55425/6 "2001-02-22T06:38:29Z")
Bahahaha! I LMAO at the title of Fig. 1. ---
**Author:** ![Emperor\_Penguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c2a13f/32.png) [@Emperor\_Penguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Emperor_Penguin)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2001, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-scientists-and-students-you-will-be-able-to-sympathize/55425/7 "2001-02-22T07:39:52Z")
Woo. That was good… I can feel this guys pain, I really can. In my first year physics lab, I had to write a 10-15 page lab report, due the day after we had the lab. I was not a happy camper. I was so tempted to do something like this so many times. Alas, my better head won through in the end, and I did no such thing, but If I had been failing the class… Heh. I hear you on that organic chem thing, **Ogre**. It’s funny that no matter how much planning you do before hand, nor how much attention you pay during the experiment, something always, always goes wrong and the whole experiment winds up going south. I’ve long since stopped caring about yields anymore, I just try and concentrate on not breaking anything and leaving the lab under my own power with the same number of dangly bits that I went in with. It’s much better that way. ---
**Author:** ![TPWombat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbce88/32.png) [@TPWombat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TPWombat)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2001, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-scientists-and-students-you-will-be-able-to-sympathize/55425/8 "2001-02-22T11:27:41Z")
Thanks, **Smeghead**! Boy, that brought back some memories 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Damhna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@Damhna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damhna)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2001, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-scientists-and-students-you-will-be-able-to-sympathize/55425/9 "2001-02-22T12:20:35Z")
Dont do that !! 🙂 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/22080_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2001, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-scientists-and-students-you-will-be-able-to-sympathize/55425/10 "2001-02-22T12:34:57Z")
This brought back memories of a gawd-awful Electronics Feedback class taught by a grad student during one summer session. The “instructor” had a bit of an attitude and insisted the material was “so simple a child of 3 could do it!” uh, yeah… So, the setting is the computer lab at 3AM, and my lab partner and I have been fighting with the final project for hours - we were just a tad punchy. Just for the heck of it, we changed one of the variables to “pi”, and the resulting graph came out decidedly phallic. This inspired us. I got some crayons and a 2nd-grade writing tablet, and we wrote a lab report “By a Child of Three” in which we not-so-subtly attacked every pat phrase our grad student liked to overuse. It was a wonderful way to purge!! I just wish I’d been present when he got to that report. For the record, we DID to a proper report and it must have been OK, because I got a B in the class. I often wonder if the guy ever figured out who did the crayon report. I’m soooooo glad those days are long behind me! ---
**Author:** ![Morrison\_s\_Lament](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Morrison\_s\_Lament](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morrison_s_Lament)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2001, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-scientists-and-students-you-will-be-able-to-sympathize/55425/11 "2001-02-22T12:47:11Z")
I love the site, but I don’t find it very hard to believe that someone turned this in. I’ve done a lot worse myself 🙂 Let’s just say that I once took a French test under the influence and wrote a long essay about drugs and jibberish called “Une Trip Grande”. I passed somehow, but like I said, I’ve done worse. — G. Raven p.s. writing the paper “Fascism in Nazi Germany vs. the form of opression practiced in our school community” was the only thing that really pissed the teachers off though ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2001, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-scientists-and-students-you-will-be-able-to-sympathize/55425/12 "2001-02-22T12:52:17Z")
Yes, I can sympathize – I used to do my “student” labs with calibrated equipment that had been calibrated over forty years earlier and using measuring equipment that was evidently there because it had been rejected by the research labs. If this guy has instructors that are at all honest they will look at the plot of real data and applaud his honesty, rather than his desire to fudge the data. I’ve graded a LOT of lab reports myself (I was one of the few grad students in my group for whom English was a native language. I was in high demand.), and by my standards this is actually a GOOD report. At least this guy can spell (I’ve had people spell “accelerate” as “excellerate”, write grammatical sentences, and he doesn’t pull any “cute” tricks (Like the guy who wrote his lab report in a slowly diminishing spiral). ---
**Author:** ![Tansu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/67e7ee/32.png) [@Tansu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tansu)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2001, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-scientists-and-students-you-will-be-able-to-sympathize/55425/13 "2001-02-22T13:45:54Z")
This takes me back to when I was taking Part 1A Natural Sciences (Physics). I used to dread the fortnightly four hour practicals. I have a nasty feeling in my stomach just thinking about them now. I took Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and History and Philosophy of Science the next year. I should probably have changed to Philosophy in the first week of the first term of the first year. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2001, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-scientists-and-students-you-will-be-able-to-sympathize/55425/14 "2001-02-22T15:31:15Z")
**Corvus** , I normally stood around in organic lab thinking, “now, was this pink sludge supposed to be our final product, or was it this nasty gray shit on the filter paper? Oops! Just dropped a condenser! Just a hairline crack, act like nothing happened.” I could answer all the theoretical questions on the test, but I was always a complete bumbling buffoon in the lab. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2001, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-scientists-and-students-you-will-be-able-to-sympathize/55425/15 "2001-02-22T15:32:39Z")
\ Ah, yes–my Electronics I lab at LSU. My lab partner and I had something like 25 years of electronics experience between us, and we _still_ couldn’t make the experiments work with what we were given. We finally took to bringing our own parts and test equipment. We did turn in one carefully crafted report explaining (in far too much detail) how our signal generator experiment produced its steady (if slightly noisy) 60 Hz sine wave. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2001, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attention-scientists-and-students-you-will-be-able-to-sympathize/55425/16 "2001-02-22T21:27:16Z")
Looks like this has struck a nerve. I have my own doubts about whether this was ever actually turned in, but he’s inspired me. I have decided that every paper I publish as a professional scientist will have the words “My Ass” in the title.