By Picov Andropov
DEERFIELD, IL – The Science Club released its findings on its first experiment late last night. Its purpose, to determine whether listening in Health class has an effect on one’s grade, was initially proposed by the club’s sophomore members. “Now that most of us have finished Health class,” said the head spokesperson for the sophomores, “we were able to reflect on how, well, we really didn’t need to come to class to get an A.” The semester long test examined six different Health courses and monitored the amount of time each student “paid attention” in relation to their semester grade. The procedures define “attention” as “[…] the ability to withstand temptation to text message, listen to one’s iPod, or doodle while maintaining total concentration on the teacher regardless of how self-explanatory the current subject is.”
Based upon the data, no correlation was found between attention and semester grades (see Figure 1: “The Effect of Dozing Off in Health Class on Performance”). Therefore, it is safe to say that listening in health class has no effect on one’s performance in the course.
This conclusion has come a little late for one tired sophomore. “I worked so hard in that class. I took notes on every chapter. Color coded and everything. But now that I know I could have slept in class, and still gotten the same grade, I feel used man…used.” That’s not to say that others did not need the study to come to this realization. “I couldn’t even tell you who my teacher was,” said one Health student who took pride in his lack of effort and attention. “And besides, it doesn’t even matter because that wasn’t a question on the final, so I was ok.”
