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Autor has stellar grades, partially because he's The Bookworm and partially because if there is a test today, there will undoubtedly be the same test tomorrow.

Related trivia: he has written the same essay ~1258 times.

Without copy/pasting?

Damn, son.

Man, don't you know that quills are where it's at?

Uh-uh. No sir. Command-A-Command-C-Command-V for me all the way.

Truth, you speak it. (Heh. If he ever finds the Milliways copy machine, he'll have a conniption.)

(And thus, it must happen? :D)

Tommy wasn't stupid in school, he was just...not cut out for academia. He had/has A.D.D., which of course hadn't been named yet when he was a student. I would say he was a C-ish student, and his preparation for exams probably consisted of cramming, cheating, and/or saying to hell with this and just winging it. He also probably mastered the Art of Bullshitting at an early age, so he could get by on things like essays. I think he's the type to learn on his own terms and not necessarily structured and by the book, so it's a good thing he didn't go to college.

The last formal test he took was the FDNY written exam. That, I think, he definitely would've taken seriously. And by taking seriously, I mean he probably didn't go out drinking the night before. I don't know how much studying is necessary, though, as I think it's mostly cognitive, memory, and reasoning problems (at least that's what I've seen on some current tests -- I don't know how different they were when Tommy joined 20~ years ago). Tommy's pretty sharp anyway. I imagine that passing this test was a proud moment for him. And then he would've gone out drinking.

I get the feeling when we do the whole "handcuffed together" thing, Voodoo's gonna be like how the fuck did you pass high school? at some point along the line.

To which he'd respond, "I HAD A.D.D., ASSHOLE."

There was this moment in canon where his dad, all sad and disappointed, told him something along the lines of, "You had such a great future ahead of you. You were bright-- well, not bright, but you were...popular."

For his part, I've decided that Voodoo was an AP student, never got anything lower than a B while in high school, and turned down a full-ride from UMass Amherst to join the Navy. Mostly I was just sick of the trend of SEALs being portrayed as these all-muscle no-brain grunts (which doesn't make for a very interesting protagonist and doesn't mesh at all with real life - over a third have college degrees, the majority probably in engineering, and there's a shitload of math involved in diving, demolitions, and sniping, not to mention all the political science that goes along with a job like theirs).

Damn that was long. It doesn't take much for me to ramble, does it?

I had something similar in mind when I went to put Shephard's background together. Even if the retired Navy chaplain who used to be my mother's boss told me 'Marine' stood for 'Muscles Are Required, Intelligence Not Essential' I still didn't see a whole lot of grounds for calling the guys I'd been reading about on Badass of the Week stupid. The paragraphs in the OpFor manual just reminded me very much of my classmates' writing, and all of them got into multiple colleges- so I knew I wasn't dealing with someone stupid. Hell, the man used a semicolon correctly! That counts for something. He could've attended a reasonably respectable college if his family could've afforded it (five kids take a lot of raising), but he didn't want to go, I figure.

I think most of the guys who go into the Marines and the SEALs and other parts of the service that're more selective and "gung ho" than others decide very early on in their lives that joining that particular branch or that particular unit is their ultimate goal. And to that end, they begin to adopt a mentality that'll enable them to not only survive, but thrive in that unit. This can start with simple things like doing their homework right or paying attention in class, and when they do that their grades, more often than not, skyrocket. But the bottom line is rock-stupid types don't last long in the military, at least not in any rating over, say, E-4. You do dumb shit and your peers will likely fuck you up for it.

I just don't understand the "dumb military guy" stereotype. Some of the smartest people I know spent some time in the service.

I suspect that at least part of it amounts to military men obey orders, which people who buy into the stereotype see as a sign of not thinking for themselves and/or not wanting to think for themselves. Add in the general image of 'if you have muscles, you must be one of those obnoxious people who spends all his energy on them instead of on intellectual pursuits' and the assumption that smart people don't want to fight and would find a way to get out of having to do so, and it all kinda stacks up regardless of accuracy.

Pinkie freaks out and tries to get everything SUPER EXTRA RIGHT.

Clemmy scribbles all of the answers every and anywhere she can conceivably draw and/or write.

Juliet studies hard, tries to ace it, and is generally jealous of anyone who does better than she.

Dixie flirts with the professor.

Mark studies. Then he takes the test. Sometimes he does better than at other times. Generally, he passes. Really, as a reasonably intelligent member of the American middle class, living in the suburbs, with supportive parents (up until recently) and nothing to really distract him from schoolwork (up until recently), he does pretty well for himself. Even without Agent Stedman's assistance, he got into college (though not on a full-ride scholarship; that was Cecil).

The main "test" of Felix's life so far has been "Are you willing to risk your parents' lives for the sake of the world?" Not really the kind of thing you can prepare for if you don't know it's coming. (He passed, by the way, his world's still there. And in better shape than it was fifteen years ago.)

Fluttershy... did horribly on Flight Camp tests. Apart from that, in the more academic subjects, I imagine she did all right as long as she didn't think about it too much. (Fluttershy, especially that far pre-canon, is insanely insecure.* If she thinks too much about what she's answering, she'll work herself into a panic and end up with an almost blank answer sheet.)

* Possibly this is related to (though obviously not entirely caused by) the fact that she appears to have either had her physical development early or gotten her cutie mark later than any other pony we've seen. Just a thought that struck me just now.

Will hasn't really had much normal academic experience, the few kinds of tests he's had have been physical. Though as Robin's squire, he did have some points of having to know how to do certain things and did well.

Charles does incredibly well with tests and academia, he takes his time studying, does his best to understand how the test creator thinks and throughout his schooling did very well. His biggest achievement was the completion of his dissertation.

Jane is another good student though as a woman in her time, she didn't have as much formal schooling, it was a combination of her father, tutors and some school. She would either study thoughtfully or get distracted by writing, but end up doing well.

William isn't good at tests, he's smart but tests make him aware of what he doesn't know. In his era, education is mainly rote learning and he knows how to memorize and is smart, but has never done that well.

Moist actually did well in tests and at school when he attended because he has a detail oriented mind and is good at figuring out what people want to hear. He was one of those students who didn't actually have to study that much because he had figured out how to beat school.

Sameth was another good student, because he's naturally curious, has no problem with spending his time studying if he's interested in the topic and is good at focusing. Discipline and knowing are both key to how his family succeeds at what they do, so school wasn't that hard for him. I'm sure there were a few times he forgot he had a test and spent a morning or night studying because he and Nick were off doing something.

Demeter finds the idea of tests a little sad, she is of the belief that there are better ways to help someone figure out what they know.

Tumnus is another solid student, not amazing by any accounts but he does well. Narnia has some formal schooling but not much and it was disrupted by the Witch, so he hasn't taken many tests.

The Pirate King could do well on tests if he cared about them, but he found school boring and ran away to be a pirate.

Scorp actually does quite well academically, particularly with spellwork classes like Charms and Transfiguration. He just ... doesn't think so. He's very hard on himself, even though he's pulling passing grades on assignments, exams, and whatnot. The times that he has gotten a failing grade? Mostly from missing a quiz and/or an assignment due to skipping class and causing an explosion in Potions.

Augh Chem 2A, I'm sorry, some Dos will make it better.

Oswin coasted through school - she never really studied, never really had to in order to pass, but she never got phenomenal grades either because of this tendency. Which frustrated more than one teacher, because she'd hack the school system for her own entertainment multiple times a week, though no one had really been able to prove anything since she was in second grade.

Ace brought her extra!strong!sulkface. She refused to waste her time studying things she didn't like, and always thought she was going to ace the subjects she did like without needing to study because she would be brilliant at them, and this is why the girl who can make explosives out of dang near anything failed her O-level chemistry tests.

If Sorcerer's Apprentice = Harry Potter, Balthazar was the Ron of their group. He got by because Veronica was wicked smart and he was always hanging around her. ... Yes, that does make Horvath the Evil!Goateed!AU!Harry.

Haymitch did not study. Haymitch didn't give a damn about school one way or the other. He was going to work in the mines no matter what he did, and you don't have to be a genius to do that. And then Reaping happened.

Glorfindel was a good little student, way the heck back before, y'know, there was a sun. >.>

Katya was tutored as a child, and did okay, but her real schooling started after she turned Other. She still considers the largest failure in her training to be the fact she was never able to shape-shift into something canine. Just. S'not fair, she likes dogs better. But she wasn't naturally inclined towards being a battle mage, so she kind of had to take what she could get.

Bones was one of those students who enjoyed studying just for the hell of it. He likes learning new things. There was the year he was crushing pretty hard on Cindy Lawrence and epically failed a few midterms when she started returning his attentions. Grandpappy McCoy was not a happy man.

Ray passed most of his academic tests by means of almost always being in study mode. He really didn't have a lot of friends in academia beyond Venkman and Spengler and his creepy roommate Mike, mostly because it took him a very, very long time to get the hang of social interaction with people who weren't Egon. He'd panic before exams and study more and then find the nearest isolated area with a flat surface after the exam was over and go sleep there, and the next time he saw the teacher/professor/what have you he'd get a fantastic grade and be sent away to go unwind. His doctoral dissertation project at Columbia was going great right up until the machine overloaded and Mike went crazy and tried to kill Ray with one of the pieces of the machine. I am not sure how the actual thesis turned out after all of this because Ghostbusters: Legion never bothered to show anything after the murder attempt but apparently it worked; I'm assuming Venkman made some of the best Fast Talk and Persuade rolls of his life, because I can't see Ray or Egon being able to pull it off under the circumstnaces.

Gordon had a bit more of a social life, although for the most part it involved hanging out with other students and listening instead of talking. He was, however, prone to heavy study fits and cramming. His thesis defense was something of a nightmare because he wasn't exactly going through one of his more vocal periods at the time, but he managed. Other tests since then have largely been of the "Don't die" variety, and so far he has generally passed them pretty well.

Shephard was never a very academic fellow. Based on the stilted but literate extract from his diary that appears in the HL: Opposing Force manual, I've gone with the assumption that he was like some of the girls in my high school class: smart, but not fond of school and really not fond of writing, at best a B student overall. He used to study about enough to pass his exams and not much more in the subjects he wasn't interested in, and put most of his effort into history and phys ed. He's much better at passing physical examinations like the PFT, because he's practicing for those all the time, and he makes a point of practicing his other job-important skills on a daily basis just in case it comes up. Because it always does.

Medic studies a lot, practices a lot, and sabotages people he thinks are likely to score higher than him on the grading curve. Since the Meet the Medic vid took so long to come out, my headcanon for BLU Medic not having his license to practice involved him and his academic archrival inadvertently re-enacting (or possibly pre-enacting, I've never been entirely clear on how old Medic is) the Reichstag fire and burning the medical school's archives to the ground in an attempt to ruin the other guy's future chances.

Mordin blows through academic tests like they're nothing, because he started preparing for ALL THE TESTS, ALL OF THEM several days before he started school. This is a traditional salarian thing, not just in academics but in warfare- salarians historically have never issued an official declaration of war before attacking, and never start a war until the plans are in place to win it.

Ellen, I think, was a decent student, but was better at listening and trying to figure out how to solve problems than at studying, and mostly specialized in figuring out how to allocate resources like 'time' and 'sleep' and 'existing knowledge' to pass academic tests more than any specific subject. She freaked out when the GOAT exam came along for sixteen year olds, because it was a test of aptitudes and supposedly had 'no wrong answers', so preparing for it was more or less impossible. Wound up getting a set of results that got her tapped as the Vault chaplain's next successor. On a code level this happens if your exam answers result in a bigger rise in your Barter skill score than any other skills; in-universe I'm thinking it amounted to demonstrating problem-solving and resource allocation skills with a minimum of aggression or piss-people-off answers. That's assuming the GOAT actually works and doesn't just assign people randomly, of course; there are some dialog options with the teacher that indicate it tends to give garbage results more often than not. As far as post-Vault tests go, they tend to be of the 'measure up to a standard of performance' variety, like Paladin Gunny's evaluation of field fitness, or the evaluations she doesn't realize take place every time someone sends her out on a mission and she comes back with results. She tends to prepare for those by thinking through what has to be done to get to the desired result and then pretty much concentrating EVERYTHING on it, which is how she wound up securing funding for a project to revive a two hundred year old factory in order to end slavery in the Pitt and cut off the outflow of people from the Capital Wasteland.

Twilight is her teacher's star pupil and consistently gets excellent grades, but she still freaks out about it.

...I've mentioned that I relate to Twilight entirely too much, right?

Edited 2013-03-01 15:59 (UTC)

Sunshine barely graduated high school. Her last couple of years of school coincided with the worst of the Voodoo Wars, and she spent most of that time in illegally-obtained and administered apathy. Her literature classes and, up to a point, her chemistry classes were the only ones she showed any palpable interest in. The rest she skipped or didn't pay attention in.

She hardly ever studied for tests, except starting just before the half-way point of her senior year, when Charlie and Mrs. Yanovsky's lecturing and cajoling and reasoning started to win out, and it looked like there was a chance Sunshine might actually graduate.

The sudden willingness to study, go clean and straighten up might also have been due to the idea of having her own bakery and being promoted to Head Baker as a graduation gift that Charlie was dangling over her head like a carrot on a string.

Feeders of people are not above bribery, obviously, but apparently they are susceptible to it, as well.

Andrea attacks tests; flash cards, regular study sessions, whatever it takes. Unless the subject matter is sword technique or folklore/mythology, she does really well.

Hank has to dumb down his answers, something he learned very quickly. He still gives good answers but he forces himself to be closer to the norm so as to not freak out teachers and other students.

Er.

Er. I'm not sure Atton has ever done a written exam. He probably didn't bother when he was in school, and he left at sixteen to join the Republic Fleet where - they were really desperate and were probably not picky about who was in their ranks so long as they could either a) Kill Mandalorians or b) Soak up Mandalorian blaster fire for twenty minutes.

So, yeah, the test there is probably 'are you still alive', with extra marks for having blown up other starfighters.

Then he joined the Sith as a Special Forces Jedi-Killing Assassin Thing, where he led his own squad, and they almost certainly didn't bother with written tests there. Revan was a very well-organised Sith Lord, but he was still leading the bloody Sith, so Atton probably got his position by just being objectively better at killing people than everyone else.

If he had any form of test there, it was probably in a practical 'these are the captains who disagree with your appointment. Maim them' form.

Then he went into a life of crime, which is notoriously bad about standardised testing, and then he became a Jedi - except he was one of the ten Lost Jedi who rebuilt the Order, so no tests there either.

Um. So, yeah, Atton's never taken a standardised test, just kind of impromptu practical ones that he always aced. I don't think he even could sit down and do a test, he'd spend twenty minutes working his way through it and then get bored and leave.

Wait. There were 10 Jedi who rebuilt the order?

I am notoriously bad at remembering these things where I beat a game and forget some of this stuff...

WAITWAITWAIT let me count.

The Exile, Atton, the Disciple, the Handmaiden, Visas, Bao-Dur, Mira, Bastila, Jolee, Juhani.

It is not, for truth, in the game - I think, Kreia might make a vague reference to it happening ~in the future~ at some point. But it is in promotional materials and other vague EU stuff.

(It is also totally contradicted by other parts of the EU, because Star Wars.)

Raphael always fared far better when it came to tests of hands-on material, rather than book learned stuff. It's not that he's stupid, though he certainly views himself to be....and is angry about that view, but that he's just a bit slower when it comes to reading comprehension.

Show him how to do something and he'll get it the second try.

Mike is that jerkface that COULD be great at something if he just tried. But why try when it's so easy to just skate by on natural talent? Yeah...he's a bit Ferris Bueller that way.

Aang is also naturally good at things, but also lacks focus. When he comes up against something he's not already good at, he changes direction and goes back to his comfort zone.

Bumi is so stubborn that he won't stop trying something until he gets it absolutely right. And if his first approach doesn't work to solve a problem, he tries a new one. Over and over and over again.

Bean has ridiculous intelligence. If he goes to a normal school, the teachers wouldn't be able to keep up with him, and he'd almost certainly get 100% in every test. As it is? He'll be pushed. He tends to prepare by reading the textbook. Physical test, he just takes them as they come.

Alfred did well enough at school. He wasn't top of the class, but he passed his O-levels comfortably enough. Then he joined the military. His preparations were always thorough, though not necessarily overly (and sometimes only barely enough) long.

Max tended to ace all his tests when he really wanted to. Otherwise, he could generally do enough to pass without too much work at all. Of course, he regarded any test as one worth doing well on. Getting his second doctorate in Electromagnetism, is probably what he's proudest of, given his undergrad degree was in Ancient History and Archeology.

Jack does solidly enough in his tests that he could have gone to university straight from High School. That he ended up going to Trinity College, is primarily due to the military, though.

Erik was solid enough at tests, and kept wanting to learn more, so he wound up a researcher at the cutting edge of astrophysics. Successes of note: Doctorate.

I'm just going to leave this here.

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