When I was a senior in high school, a bunch of my friends and I were all in the same chemistry class. We didn't really like the teacher all that much, and I guess we gave him some attitude. He gave it right back. All year long, we had a sort of ongoing battle with this guy. In hindsight, he was a pretty good teacher, and I'm glad we didn't give him too much grief, but just the right amount. In the end, we outsmarted him, and it's one of my funniest memories from high school.

We took five or six multiple-choice tests throughout the year. Multiple-choice tests are generally easier than other types, in my opinion, but these weren't. You had to know the material pretty well, and in general, we did. Most of my friends were making A's or B's.

Then came time for the final exam. The teacher told us that all of the questions would be pulled from the earlier tests, so we should study all of that material and know it well. Then he said that each of us could bring one 3x5 index card of notes with us.

At first, the idea of notes on a 3x5 index card seemed fairly useless. Even if you write small, how much info can you cram onto one of those cards? Then one of us had an epiphany...

If the teacher was going to pull all the exam questions from previous exam questions, couldn't we simply jot down the first few words from each question, followed by the correct letter that represented the answer?

For example, let's say one of the questions was this:

What is the speed of light in free space (a vacuum)?
A. A billion miles per hour.
B. Faster than a Buick.
C. Approximately 186,000 miles per second.
D. Pi

All we had to do was jot down:
"What is the speed (C)"

We did that for every question, and we managed to fit every single question from previous exams onto our index cards. Now, the only thing that would screw us up would be if the teacher juggled the answers around a little. But we knew the material well enough that we'd be able to tell if he did that.

So, the day of the final exam came, and we all got our tests, and it took just seconds for us all to know that he had lifted the questions exactly as they appeared in the earlier exams. Which meant we were all going to ace the test.

The best part came when the teacher was slowly strolling around the room, keeping an eye out for cheaters. He came up next to me at one point and looked down at my index card. He picked it up and appeared puzzled at first, the he realized what we had done. His face completely blanched. I'm sure he felt pretty foolish. But there wasn't anything he could do except give me the card back. We had followed all of his rules.

There was even an extra credit question, so we all scored 104 on the final.

Is that inspirational or what?