OK, let's just begin with the premise that the unexpected outcome of the experiment was not my fault. I was in the control group, it turned out, and I wasn’t told what NOT to do. So WHAT if the professor has been doing this experiment on her students for 4 semesters a year for 10 years with identical results, nary a glitch in her tidy little use-my-students-as-lab-rats experiment, every single time until I came along. How could I have known? It just goes to show that social experiments are not trustworthy, especially when they involve ACTUAL people. That's all. I didn’t cheat. I didn’t lie. I just followed the directions and used what little is left of my brain by Monday night. I guess the last straw was when I pointed that out.
She told us to remember 20 random words in order. Which, let me point out, is a complete waste of the 10% of my brain I am using (according to the research squibs). So I admit it: I listened and used a LINKING STRATEGY, which I happen to teach my students. Is that so wrong? How could I have known that she'd secretly told the other group about LINKING and that was to be their advantage?! So when we get to the stage of counting points and plotting relative graphs and my group is getting 3, 4, 5 points and their group is getting 5, 6, 7 points all appears to be going according to her predivined plan. And then my little 19 out of 20 turns the table and for the first time in her career, the Control Group "wins" (note: their words not mine).
And they started pointing their fingers at me. Stage whispers of "Mole" "mole" "mole" "she's the mole" "it would've all been perfect if she had been in the other group, not the "control" group" "throw out her test score. - take her out of the activity" "she's ruining it" "see Professor, everything would have worked out the way you wanted if SHE had not participated"
All not my fault. She put me in Group B. It was a double-blind study. I didn’t even know what Group A was doing..... Somehow articulating this all made it worse. People don’t like the truth. They always want to shoot the messenger, especially when the messenger tells them that the skill they so desperately want to excel in is clearly fallible at best, questionable to the point of useless at worst. Sucks to be the messenger.
And thus, though no fault of mine, I am being scapegoated. And these lunatics are out for blood. Which puts me on the run from my Monday night class, which, last I checked before darting out the door, was organizing to stone me with shoes as soon as they found me.
So here is what I learned alongside my creepily competitive classmates in Graduate School Education tonight:
A. Nothing bonds a class more than a common enemy (that'd be me, yep, bows all around)
B. I can pull into first place, surpassing even coke-withdrawling-malarial-quaking-neurological-and-socializing-disorders-shaking-sweat-drenched dude, for social pariah of the class. (yeay for me!)
C. "Research" is not to be trusted. (Oh wait, I didn’t learn that tonight. I just reaffirmed it.)
But do allow me to summarize the steps:
1. Be in the Control Group of your Research Methodologies class
2. Unwittingly be the resident "expert" in what you happen to be studying.
3. Unintentionally dramatically skew the results for a room of rabid teachers-as-students
4. Show no remorse/ find the whole thing funny
Until Next Monday.... Assuming they don’t find me....
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