Different strokes

More grad school travails- after scoring a 75.5 on my Operations Management midterm (higher than the class average, believe it or not), we got a take-home exam today in Finance 2 ("The Bloodening"). It's a case study with pages upon pages of a conversation between two business people about whether to invest in somesuch or another based on projected zzzzzzzzzzz. I called Ann at the class break to tell her we'd gotten it and that the professor had told us to take 20 minutes to look it over. She asked what my initial impressions were, to which I replied that the plot was weak, the characters one dimensional, and the dialogue needed some serious work. Then she had the nerve to ask if I'd spent the entire time since we received the exam thinking of that one, and I mean come on, give me a little credit, it was only like a minute or something. God. She still has a lot to learn about comedy, I'm afraid. However, I'm once again faced with the sad truth that in an English class (see: things I'm actually good at), my noticing of the fact that one of the characters starts three consecutive sentences (and then two more later on) with the phrase "No problem." would be grounds for my immediately passing the exam, or at least win me some points with the professor. Here, I have the sickening feeling it would earn me nothing more than a blank look and a query about whether I had a question.

Sigh. These people may know how to predict financial models when working with a very defined set of data you'd never actually be able to get in real life, but they could stand a few more lessons about creative expression and writing interesting scenarios. Not once have I seen one where the company's stock suddenly plummets because the founder and CEO has a massive coronary while in bed with his mistress, forcing his long-suffering and inexperienced wife to take the reins of the company. And that's just sad.