Foolscap

There is always an easier way of doing things, a shortcut to be found. When I was younger I was always looking for that angle…that overlooked secret that would give me an edge. It was this steadfast dedication to taking the easy road that led me to the discovery of Foolscap.

Foolscap, (for the uninitiated) was a special type of paper that in the early eighties, was used only in schools. Specifically it was reserved as the paper upon which the final exams were printed. Foolscap is about the same length as legal paper, but a bit wider and had a somewhat stiffer composition. What made foolscap so special however, was its absence outside the classroom or beyond the walls of my local high school. It seemed to thrive only in the florescent-hell of the final-examination torture chamber.
I, however, stumbled across its actual birthplace; a small out of the way shop devoted solely to providing teachers with educational tools and supplies. As a student, just walking through those doors felt like you were committing a crime. At any moment you expected a teacher crouching behind the eraser display to jump up and point an accusing finger. “You! Student! You can’t be in here! Get him out of here!!”

There certainly was nothing in this kind of a shop that would normally appeal to a 16-year-old kid sporting a plaid lumber jacket, ripped jeans with the faded Van-Halen patch on his ass. I must have looked as out of place as my teachers did in the venues they didn’t belong – like shopping malls and movie theatres.

I tossed down the $6.95 for 500 sheets, my breath caught in the back of my throat, palms sweating. Oddly, neither my presence nor my choice of product seemed to faze the bookish young girl at the cash, as she absent-mindedly rang up my precious purchase.

And what a purchase it would prove to be! Those inexpensive, odd-sized sheets of paper would represent the key that would unlock the shackles of my textbook-induced slavery.

The problem with conventional cheat sheets is that you have to go to extreme lengths to transcribe a lot of detail onto very small pieces of paper. After all your work, you are saddled with the difficult task of then trying to refer to your tiny notes without getting caught. The process was inefficient and altogether risky business, for if you weren’t careful, you could end up with a lovingly created list of mind-numbing formulas, stuck somewhere on the inside of your sweaty forearm.

While I made a good sum of pocket money creating and selling these small cheat notes to my classmates, as I say, it was system fraught with danger, and prone to mishaps. The only method of writing small enough was to use the 5H Drafting Pencil, specifically the Staedtler Mars Lumograph 100, which was my pencil of choice in drafting class, and for cheat notes. Known for its ability to produce extremely fine detail, once sharpened to a razor point, the 5H wouldn’t produce much lead dust which was essential to producing a crisp legible cheat note. Having the steady hands of surgeon helped too.

But… what if you didn’t have to ever hide your cheat-sheets? What if you could have them right there in front of you during the exam? What if you could refer to them easily without squinting because the answers were in large print? What if the cheat sheet actually looked like the exam you were writing? If one could do all this, the unimaginable would become reality: No more studying for exams – ever.

My thought processes hinged on a clear understanding of the “Three Universal Exam-Constants”;

Rule Number One: It was common knowledge that the teacher presiding over the exam room was never, ever your teacher. Mr. Thissen from history would watch over the kids writing their algebra exams, and Ms. Wallace from English would scrutinize the kids writing French. It was almost as if the powers-that-be felt there was some sort of wacky bias at play. Perhaps there was some law that stipulated that in order to effectively watch these students, they mustn’t be your students. Either way, this odd system would prove to be an invaluable advantage.

Rule Number Two: The teachers presiding over the students during an exam, never actually wrote the exams being distributed. (see Rule Number One).

Finally, (and most importantly) Rule Number Three: The print format of any and all exams always included the typed question, then a good chunk of space below for your hand-written responses.

And naturally, all exam questions were typed on foolscap paper.

Quietly, up in my bedroom, using my moms old typewriter I would hen-peck out possibly the single greatest shortcut of my high school career: Full Sized Cheat Sheets.

I would first type dummy questions upon my foolscap, leaving the appropriate blank space below it for the answer. In that space I would insert my hand written notations, and those notations would in actuality, be my cheat notes. My foolscap would look just like a sheet from any exam. To a teacher wandering the aisles, or even glancing at my desk, nothing would appear amiss.

After the first two successful attempts with this method of exam preparation, I decided to try some enhancements. Full Sized Cheat Sheets, Version Two, if you will.

Instead or typing gibberish as the dummy questions, I began actually typing in the cheat note content, as the fake questions. The space for my additional hand-written notes below would simply allow me the opportunity to maximize the amount of information I could have on one sheet of foolscap. This enhancement was quite helpful, as there was really quite a bit to memorize in classes like Chemistry and Biology. English and social studies and the like, were all about being able to churn out reams of intelligent sounding drivel, but the sciences really needed solid cheat sheets.

Now naturally one would have to be an idiot to whip out a sheet of foolscap at the beginning of an exam. Having a full page of answers moments after the bell sounded would be rather suspect. The key was to work on the questions you actually knew how to answer first (there were usually a few). Then, after a sufficient amount of time had elapsed, slip out the sheet of foolscap. Hell, by the time I hit grade 11, I had as many as half a dozen stapled sheets on my desk at any one time.

But how exactly do you get those painstakingly crafted sheets onto your desk? Most people don’t get this part. In fact, you’ve been probably sneering as you read this, assuming this all to be quite preposterous. To the uninitiated this often seems like the hardest part of the endeavor. Actually, it is without question the easiest part of the process. A jean jacket can conceal the notes if you tuck them under your arm so that the pages gently curve around the side of your body. Just don’t fold those sheets! Make sure to sit straight, don’t sweat too much, and then ease them out when the teacher is looking down, or passes you in the isle. It takes less than a second to pull it off. Once they are out, they can sit in full view until its time to hand in your masterpiece. Remember rule number one: the teacher presiding over the exam didn’t actually write the exam. This guarantees that they’d never spot the difference between the real exam and your fabricated version. I used to have to leave questions unanswered, mess up responses, just so my score wouldn’t nudge into the high eighties. Trust me - that would really have tipped somebody off.

Parent teacher interview, after parent teacher interview, my beleaguered parents would hear the same somber comments from my teachers: “He’s a lazy student..he doesn’t pay attention…he doesn’t apply himself…but gosh he’s smart, he sure is! How else can you describe a boy that can barely pass a test or quiz all year to save his life, but when exam time comes around, always manages to pull it off and save his average?? It’s such a tragedy that he can’t apply himself like that all year long – imagine what he could accomplish?!”

Imagine indeed.

The part I loved most about the process? On my way out of the exam room, I would crunch up, or casually rip in half my “rough notes” and just drop it in the trash right before the watchful eyes of the room monitor. I would leave the evidence right there in the garbage can, to be thrown out with the rest of the classroom trash - pencil shavings, banana peels and all.

Looking back, I recognize with wistful gratitude that I probably owe much of my high school freedom to that bundle of irregular sized paper.

I never did find out why they call it foolscap.