Work Text:
Warp stood at the front of the class, staring out a sea of faces. He slapped a heavy stack of exams on the small table in front of him.
“It is time to get back your exams! A day loved and hated by many!” Warp started walking up and down the aisles, matching people to their names. “As you know, this is the time when you start reevaluating your entire life. ‘What am I gonna tell my parents? Do I have to study more or can I go drinking tonight?’ Well fear no more! If you think you earned more points for a question, come to my office and tell me!”
He gave out the last of the papers and returned to the front of the class.
“A few things that I noticed with notation…”
—--
The class average was better and he was happy that people were understanding everything better. He sat in his office while chatting with Star. Both were aware that students would be coming in to argue for their points, something that Star was fascinated by.
As predicted a few students did come by, most gaining back a point or two for their trouble and mildly convincing arguments. Star thought it was stupid that Warp gave away points for simply trying but it wasn’t Star’s business. It was mid office hours when a student came in with an annoyed look on his face.
This student was something of an enemy to Warp. They expected to get an A and leave, thinking they were better or knew better than he did. Warp did not mind people asking questions or being more knowledgeable from AP highschool courses. When students think those AP courses made them child prodigies and therefore unable to do anything wrong.
Warp found that the best solution was to give a warning or too, then just take points.
“Hello! How can I help you today?” Warp greeted nicely, manners were always important.
The student sat with a huff and pulled out his exam. “I think you graded this wrong.”
‘Well fuck you too then.’
Warp breathed in slowly to calm himself. “Show me what’s the issue and let's see what we can do.”
The student set the exam down and opened the packet to the offending question.
“Here, you knocked off points for this arrow. Its in the right spot in the right direction.”
“Oh! I said before the exam that if you use special labeling for the forces, you need to put on the side what they mean. This isn’t the standard labeling we went over and it's used everywhere in your exam. It wasn’t labeled right so I had to take points.”
The student scoffed, “that’s stupid, I should get the one hundred percent I earned.”
Warp sighed, “Look, I gave the whole class a warning. You aren’t the only one who made this mistake and you still got 95%! That’s great, be proud of that.”
The student grabbed the test out of Warp’s hand and shoved it in his bag. He quickly stormed out and Star stared at the empty seat.
“...what crawled up his ass and died?”
Star was shocked to hear a student be so disrespectful to a professor’s face. It was almost admirable, almost. Star could respect standing up for yourself but it's good to admit when you’re wrong.
Star looked towards Warp and saw a defeated look on his face. Star sighed and got up to wrap his arms around his friend.
“He was wrong, it's not your fault.”
Warp sighed, “I know! But this means I'm going to have to give this kid a zero if he does it again and I hate doing that!”
Star squeezed Warp then let go, “Sometimes, karma dictates that they deserve it. He had his chance, don’t feel bad for his stupidity.”
Warp sighed and nodded, “Alright.”
Star returned to his little spot on the couch and laid back. Students continued to come and go, asking questions and arguing their points.
—----
Warp walked into class and prepared for the day’s lesson. Before he started, he wanted to make an announcement to clear his own conscience.
“Okay everyone! Before we get this show on the road I have something to stay.” Warp put his hands behind his back so he could squeeze out the stress. “I’m very happy so many of you came to argue your points! However, there was an issue I needed to clear up. Labelling was a bit of an issue and I get it, however I did warn you all about it. In the future, I will not be giving back points for mislabelling. You can do what you like and label what you want, but know that in the future I’ll just give you a zero. I have no problem with this at all!”
Some students giggled in the back.
“With that, let’s get onto our lesson.”
Warp turned on the projector and his slides flipped up, grabbing his apple pen he began to review last session’s takeaways.
“Now, why do we have centripetal acceleration?”
No one responded, the room was dead quiet. Warp saw a few students looking away so he wouldn’t call on them.
“People, these questions are only going to get harder.”
The student from his office raised their hand and Warp called on them.
“The velocity changes constantly.”
Warp made a thoughtful sound, “Close but not what I'm looking for.”
The student scowled but Warp moved on, calling on another sacrifice student.
They mumbled something that sounded correct, but they were sitting to far back for Warp to reliably guess.
“Could you repeat that?”
“Uh…when umm, the direction of the velocity constantly changes?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
There were some giggles from around the room. The student seemed to shrink a little and Warp almost took mercy upon them, but they were smiling to he let it go.
“Telling you.”
“Good! That is correct, when an object is moving in a circle, the direction of its velocity changes all the time. That is what results in centripetal acceleration.”
Warp quickly returned to his ipad and wrote the statement he just spoke. The class continued without incident and he was all too happy to wrap up the class and head out. He was just about to leave when he heard someone clear his throat behind him.
The student from earlier did not look too pleased.
“Yes?”
“I know that the whole ‘I’ll give you a zero’ speech was about me. I didn’t appreciate it in the slightest. I’m going to report this to the chair of the department.”
The student quickly stormed off and Warp was left standing there, staring at the empty space. He laughed as he left the building and headed home. He pulled out his phone and made a call. It’s too bad TC and Star were in class right now, he had so much tea!
“Yo! Misfire, you remember that student I told you about the other day? You’ll never guess what just happened!”