After a recent wave of “discovering the graduation requirements for the first time” and “my advisor saying that Personal Finance Decisions isn’t quantitative reasoning even though it has SO many numbers”, many Pitzer seniors have felt lost, scared, and afraid that they might not be able to graduate. But one Harvey Mudd sophomore, Marcus Stembert, has provided a new, valuable service: taking Calculus I for 39 different Pitzer seniors.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, when Marcus wakes up, he puts on some birks, pulls up his comically oversized jorts, and skips the shower. Only then is he officially ready to do his big job for the day: pretending to be 39 different people between four different sections of Calculus 1. After grabbing his electric scooter and a mason jar full of water, he’s on his way.
It’s no question that Marcus is talented at what he does: whether he’s answering questions for three in his 9:35 session or saying ‘here’ six times during attendance in his 11:00 one, Marcus has become a natural liar and a talented conman. In fact, one of his biggest pieces of advice for faking a Pitzer Student is to not show up at all.
Another trick Marcus described to disguise himself as a Pitzer student is in the test-taking: “You can’t just write the right answer. Or the wrong one. Or any numbers at all. Maybe write a few sentences about how hard it is to be vegan or something, then a couple little doodles of eyes or whatever. But the most important thing is to come to office hours the next day and make sure the professor knows exactly who your parents are.”
“I’m really glad we’ve been able to create a beautiful mutualistic relationship. He gets to do like, math, or whatever those Mudd kids are into, and I get to finish my praxis requirement of drunkenly giving people stick-and-pokes”, one Pitzer senior said. “It’s not that I can’t do math – it’s just not my thing. Quantitative Reasoning fully goes against my core value of not taking classes that I might have to take tests for.”
Another Pitzer Senior, Arthur, Heir to the Olive Garden Fortune, who recently got a really shit stick-and-poke, adds that “Mark is a life changer. I just took Principles of Macro last semester and I decided to change my major again. But we need to take Calculus for Econ, or whatever – not my thing. If it was fair for me to pay for someone to take my SAT, then why isn’t it fair to pay Mark to take Calculus for me? We live in a free market.”