Episode VI

Dr. Pettigrew sat in his office scanning the local newspaper. He was expecting his new teaching assistant in about ten minutes. The newspaper headlines were bleak, as always. Gang wars, drive-by shootings, rampant burglary and vandalism. The university campus, like his own house, was in a nicer part of town which escaped most of the criminal activity, and it was safer too because the campus security guards were more dependable than the police. Still, the mayor was doing a deplorable job of managing the city. They need someone with intelligence in the position, he thought. Someone with a backbone who is willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. An article suddenly caught his eye: A group of concerned citizens were circulating a petition to oust the mayor and hold a recall election. Most likely, they would collect enough signatures. Interesting.

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on his office door. "Come in," he called out. The door opened to reveal Dennis Brown.

"You said to be here at two, sir."

"Yes, you're right on time. You'll need to fill out these papers and take them to the Student Employment office. I've already filled out my part."

"Thank you," Dennis said, putting the papers into his backpack. "So, what will I be doing in this job?"

"What I need the most right now is help with my two World History sections. The students take two quizzes each week. One is in-class using scantrons, and the other is online. You will run the scantrons through the machine that reads the scores and record them in two electronic gradebooks, one for each section of the class. You also need to transfer the scores from the online quizzes from the class website -- I'll give you a password -- into the same gradebooks."

"You mean the electronic scores aren't transferred automatically?"

"No, they are not. I've talked to the computer tech people but they can't seem to do anything about it."

"Well, I could do the coding to make that happen. It wouldn't be that hard; I'd just have to..."

"All right, fine. Don't tell me the details, just make it work. I also want various statistics on each set of scores. Mean, median, mode, range, percentile distribution and letter grade distribution. That means you'll have to do math."

"That's not a problem, sir. I can even write a program to do all that automatically as well."

"Good. You can pick up the scantrons from me every Friday. The first batch are in these envelopes. The reader is in room C-513, for which my secretary will give you a key. There's a computer in there also. Here is the URL for the class website and the administrative password. Since you know so much about computers, you should be able to figure out how everything works." He wrote the information down on a piece of notepaper and handed it to Dennis, along with the envelopes. "Return the scantrons to me when you are finished with them. Unless you have questions, you may go now."

"No, no questions. Thank you, sir." Dennis managed to make it out of the office and down the hall into the bathroom before bursting into tears.