Горизонт N2/831

RUSSIAN DENVER / HORIZON
4
Benjamin Cook Lourie,
Colorado
By Ben Lourie
This year during final exams
at CU Boulder, something
incredible happened:
a whole day of finals was
canceled. Compared with
high school, snow days at
the university are very rare.
I never thought much about
what would happen if a snow
storm were to hit during finals,
but I always assumed
that even under the most extreme
circumstances, finals
would be rescheduled, but
never canceled. And not only
were some exams canceled,
many students’ teachers gave
everyone in the class A’s on
the finals to ensure students
who had been hoping to pull
off a good grade on the final
N02/831 от 01.15.2016 e-mail: info@gorizont.com Simply the best
Are Snow Days “Fair”?
were not penalized. I am sure
for the majority of students,
however, finals were a burden
rather than an opportunity
to boost one’s grade in the
last minute. I am sure that on
that day, many students who
doubt God’s existence were
forced to reexamine this. A
miracle that most college students
only dream of had happened.
Not all finals were
canceled. The way finals work
is that certain class times correspond
with a certain set
time during the week following
the last week of classes
to hold the final. Therefore,
somebody may have two finals
Monday, one on Tuesday,
none on Wednesday, and two
more on Thursday. Or as in
my case, two on Wednesday
and two on Thursday. The
point is, it’s a toss-up based
on chance. A pretty fair system,
if you ask me. And for
those who had finals on Tuesday,
their exams miraculously
vanished by executive decision
of the university thanks
to a snow storm no one saw
coming. While many people
benefited from the snow
storm, I didn’t. But who was
I to complain? It is not like it
had any effect on me; it is not
as though my circumstances
were affected by the unbelievable
luck of others.
Not everyone would
agree with me on this. One
friend of mine and I were
studying together that day,
and he was not happy about
the fact that none of his finals
had been canceled. He and
I were in the same boat, but
while I was indifferent to what
happened, he maintained that
it was “not fair.” This friend
of mine is extremely smart,
and even an A- is a rare sight
on his transcript. In short, he
is the last person who needed
to have his finals canceled, as
one of the smartest students
in all of his classes. Nonetheless
it seemed unfair to him
that others had won the lottery
of higher education, yet
he had won nothing.
“It’s not like it affects you,”
I told him. Instead of agreeing
with me, he described a
complex “what-if ” situation
to demonstrate the injustice
of the situation:
“There are people
who got away with not having
to take really hard finals, and
therefore, their grades will
be higher than they would
have been had they taken the
final. And when employers
are comparing me with those
students, their grades will be
artificially high. Some of the
classes that had their finals
canceled were the hardest
finals I took in college, and
students in the same major as
me won’t have to take them,”
and so forth. While he may
have been partially right,
I couldn’t help but point out
to him that he already has a
job lined up after graduation
that most other undergrads
could only dream of having.
The process of working hard
to prepare for those tests
makes him better suited to do
whatever job he is applying
for than those who got lucky,
no matter what the transcript
says, although for him, it is
probably irrelevant because
he got A’s anyways. Unfortunately,
the mentality of our
society is results are more important
than the process. We
are so focused on grades that
we don’t care about actually
learning. And so we cram for
tests, write research papers in
one night, pass, forget everything
we learned, and repeat.
But that is a discussion for
another day…
“If anything freshmen
are actually going to be
worse off,” I tried to point
out, making a stretch of an
argument, as he had done.
“It’s their first semester in
college, and they were saved
from having to take some of
their finals by the weather.
Now there is a set precedent
in their minds that maybe
finals can be avoided.” What
seemed to bother him the
most was the flood on social
media of pictures and videos
of other people out partying.
Their partying had no effect
on him, and if he wanted, he
could be out there with them.
Some of these students may
have been done with finals,
maybe some of them should
have been studying. I was
only bothered by this because
I knew it was students who
were out partying when they
could be studying that would
be complaining that the final
was too hard, or that because
of the snow day they couldn’t
study because the library was
closed (but at least the liquor
store was open).
“I bet finals scores
will be unusually low this
year because campus is closed
and people have no place to
study,” he said to me as we
sat studying in a restaurant.
Somehow he didn’t see the
irony.
“I didn’t realize
studying at home was some
sort of impossible task,” I replied.
Sure, I tend to get more
done when I am not home,
but I still think it was a pretty
sad excuse…
“What if someone
doesn’t have access to the internet
at home?” He responded.
“Well, I have never met
anyone who doesn’t have
access to WiFi at home in
Boulder, but if such a person
exists, they could always
do exactly what we are doing
right now and go to somewhere
with WiFi.”
“What if they don’t have a
car?”
“Public transport? Walking?”
For someone who is
smart and a hard-worker,
I was surprised by his ability
to come up with what-if excuses
for hypothetical situations
that didn’t apply to him.
Hunting for unfair circumstances
is not specific to him
alone, and almost everyone
is guilty of comparing themselves
with others and being
upset about other people being
better off than us to at
some time or another. I can’t
pretend I am not guilty of
this from time to time myself.
Nonetheless, nothing is sure
to make you unhappy as fast
as looking at other people’s
good fortune with bitterness.
Snow day or not, my friend’s
life, as well as mine, would
have been exactly the same.
As if just the knowledge that
someone out there was getting
a better deal was enough
to create a sense that the situation
is unfair. Something
tells me he and I wouldn’t
have been having that conversation
had one of his tests
been cancelled. But wouldn’t
the situation still have had
all the same unfair qualities
as before even if one of his
tests had been cancelled? Of
course, but typically we only
care about this perceived unfairness
when we are the ones
getting the worse deal, or in
reality, just someone else is
getting a better deal. In fact,
the problem isn’t being upset
when an unfair situation
makes us worse off, but being
upset just because someone
else is better off. For
example, if you are sitting in
economy class on a flight, and
the passenger next to you is
randomly upgraded to first
class, you are no worse off. It
would have been nice if you
had been upgraded, but you
are no worse off. Let’s say that
you were moved to a worse
seat on a flight based on race,
however, this would clearly
be unfair and worthy of outrage.
To call the first situation
unfair is actually wrong, because
you are grouping it into
the second category with an
actual instance of unjust discrimination.
The problem is that life
will never be as “fair” as we
want it to be. Lazy students
may have gotten away with
not studying for finals thanks
to an unforeseeable storm. At
the same time, a student who
was counting on the final
exam to raise his grade may
have not gotten the chance
to do so. Some things in life
our beyond our control – like
snow storms. What we do get
to choose is how we react.
Someone will always have it
better than us if we insist on
comparing ourselves to others,
although the thing we
tend to do less is to focus
on how many people have it
worse than us. The first step
towards being happier is accepting
life isn’t fair. I am not
saying we should accept injustice
when we can do something
about it; in fact, we
should do our best to make
life as fair as possible and
by taking care of those who
are worse off than us. By accepting
that no matter what
life will never be perfectly
fair and not looking enviously
at those who seem to
have a perceived advantage,
we do ourselves a favor and
can begin to look at how to
make the best of our own circumstances.
Despite maybe
feeling like the situation was
unfair, this friend of mine got
back to studying and making
good grades, which is probably
why he has such a good
job lined up. He may like to
make up hypothetical excuses
for hypothetical what-if situations,
but at the end of the
day, his grades speak louder
than his minor complaints.