The Exams and Labs That Turned Students into Yellow Jackets
By: Jennifer Herseim | Categories: Featured Stories
For many alumni it wasn’t during a ceremony that they became a true Yellow Jacket. It was earned mid-exam, mid-lab, or mid-project.
Perhaps you flipped through the test looking for the easiest problem to solve first and got to the last page without finding it. Or you took a fluids exam with a question that included parts A through Z. Or solved a three-stage compressor problem in the days before calculators using trial and error, which took 12 hours with a slide rule.
In many of these moments, Yellow Jackets are born.
Open-Book Take-Home Final
Jim Nazzaro, EE 76, remembers an open-book take-home final with only four questions. “The professor said, ‘It’s open-book, but it won’t help you.’ And he was right,” Nazzaro says.
Nazzaro was a clever student and a bit of a prankster (he took a few trips to the Dean of Students’ office), but he remembers really hitting the books for one final for a course on pulse, digital, and switching that was taught by a visiting professor. “I studied the material, except for the last three weeks of the 12-week course, and the entire final was on the last three weeks!”
Showing up to a Lab During a Torrential Downpour
It wasn’t a test that showed Miriam Patton, ChE 76, the lengths that she would go to earn her Tech degree; it was a torrential downpour, the likes of which the El Paso, Texas, native had never witnessed before.
Patton was supposed to leave for her 8 a.m. physics lab when the deluge started. It was too late to take the bus and she didn’t own a car, so she took off running from Fitten Hall to the physics building.
“By the time I arrived, I looked like a drowned rat, but I was a sophomore then—not that kind of RAT (Recruit at Tech),” she clarifies. Only two other students showed up with her. Eventually a TA arrived to inform them that the lab would be postponed. This was before the days of cell phones or the internet and Patton assumed everyone would be there. “My parents instilled in me a good work ethic, but Georgia Tech really instilled in me a good work ethic,” she says.
"We have to work really hard!"
After Patton’s first year, she and her classmates grew used to how much Tech demanded of them. “We used to laugh about the fact that we’d see pictures of Princeton’s campus and how beautiful and lush and green it was,” she remembers. “And we’d go, ‘Even if Georgia Tech looked like that, we wouldn’t have time to enjoy it because we have to work really hard!’”
Yellow Jackets Sound Off: Remembering Exams
Read memories of dreaded exams and finals shared on the Georgia Tech Alumni Association Facebook:
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"Dynamics final. It was quarter system so I had to take the makeup final due to conflict since the finals were 4 hrs back then. I went in with a B but got crushed on the final. Every equation had variables only, no numbers. It was awful." —David Hegerich
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"I still have nightmares about multiple choice physics tests." —Keith Kilpatrick
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"Dr. Desai's Thermo class...Only 2 questions for midterm and final. Must show all work for any potential credit. Don't write a step, but get the correct final answer...You only get partial credit." —Scott Evans
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"The first test I took as a EE that had real and imaginary components of the equations that had to be resolved using vector math converting from rectangular to polar coordinates and back again. I had not yet purchased my HP28s but did so the very next week....The runner up was any test question that began "Exhaust your knowledge....." —Mike Duralia
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"I used to have a recurring dream that I had literally forgotten a course (or had meant to drop it), and then try to take the final in a vain attempt to pass it. I'm 56 and this dream STILL creeps into my sleep from time to time." —Howie Bruce
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"40+ years later my only real 'nightmares' I have about once a year is that I’m heading for a final and it occurs to me I never went to class and have no idea where to go and get lost wandering around campus!" —Steve Sheetz
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"The one problem Dynamics final… lots of required answers, but each answer built on the previous, so if you got off track, the whole thing went south." —Paul Cotcher
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"Six hour Static final on a Saturday from the “Bamboo Shaft”!" —Jeffray Widincamp
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"Quantum mechanics final exam—4 questions but took 34 pages of the cool engineering graph paper to annotate. Group work was allowed, and we holed up in the Woodruff study lounges for a week." —Chip Parker
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"The English teacher who thought we had time to read 12 (long!) books during a 9 week quarter..." —Cindy Lewis
