During the middle of his freshman year, Ben took on a job as a teacher’s aide to earn some money. He knew that teachers needed help because the statewide education assessment was being held that month, so while the teachers went over those exams, Ben would grade the regular tests.
Originally, Ben wanted to get on the good side of Hart, the math teacher, because he taught the advanced calculus class that Ben would take his junior year. Soon, though, he realized that Hart was teaching a different section of the same math class that he, and the rest of the accelerated freshmen were taking. Like all good math teachers, Hart hated pen. The following day, Ben brought an extra-large eraser, isolated Jonathan Dodson’s test, and went to work on that test whenever Hart went to the bathroom. Ben had a better idea of Dodson’s grades than Dodson himself did. Jonathan got his first B that semester, an eighty-nine point two percent.
Ben quit his other job as a telemarketer and signed on with the Science department. Jonathan never got another A in a math or science class. But really, it wasn’t that difficult. Most of the tests Ben left alone because of the low point value or the fact that Jonathan already didn’t do well enough on them. It was only on the tests where it was extremely difficult to grade, the ones with the complex force diagrams and calculations, the ones with only one question worth 70 points on which Ben would shift a decimal point or two, add a significant figure where it didn’t belong. And only enough to knock off two or three points per exam. Jonathan, who had once been a somewhat serious academic challenger, was no more—his GPA dropping to two-tenths below Ben’s, his class rank slipping to sixth.