Final Examination
For anyone who has dreaded taking a final,
just be thankful that you didn't get this one!
Instructions: Read each question carefully.
Answer all questions. Time Limit: 4 hours. Begin immediately.
- History: Describe the history
of the papacy from its origins to the present day, concentrating especially,
but not exclusively, on its social, political, economic, religious, and
philosophical impact on Europe, Asia, America, and Africa. Be brief, concise,
and specific.
- Medicine: You have been provided
with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch. Remove your
appendix. Do not suture until your work has been inspected. You have 15
minutes.
- Public Speaking: Twenty-five hundred
riot-crazed aborigines are storming the classroom. Calm them. You may use
any ancient language except Latin or Greek.
- Biology: Create life. Estimate
the differences in subsequent human culture if this form of life had developed
500 million years earlier, with special attention to its probable effect
on the English parliamentary system. Prove your thesis.
- Music: Write a piano concerto.
Orchestrate and perform it with flute and drum. You will find a piano under
your seat.
- Psychology: Based on your degree
of knowledge of their works, evaluate the emotional stability, degree of
adjustment, and repressed frustrations of each of the following: Alexander
of Aphrodisias, Rameses II, Gregory of Nicea, Hammurabi. Support your evaluations
with quotations from each man's work, making appropriate references. It
is not necessary to translate.
- Sociology: Estimate the sociological
problems which might accompany the end of the world. Construct an experiment
to test your theory.
- Management Science: Define management.
Define science. How do they relate? Why? Create a generalized algorithm
to optimize all managerial decisions. Assuming an 1130 CPU supporting 50
terminals, each terminal to activate your algorithm; design the communications
interface and all necessary control programs.
- Engineering: The disassembled
parts of a high-powered rifle have been placed in a box onyour desk. You
will also find an instruction manual, printed in Swahili. In ten minutes
a hungry Bengal tiger will be admitted to the room. Take whatever action
you feel is appropriate. Be prepared to justify your decision.
- Economics: Develop a realistic
plan for refinancing the national debt. Trace the possible effects of your
plan in the following areas: Cubism, the Donatist controversy, the wave
theory of light. Outline a method for preventing these effects. Criticize
this method from all possible points of view. Point out the deficiencies
in your point of view, as demonstrated in your answer to the last question.
- Political Science: There is a
red telephone on the desk beside you. Start World War III. Report at length
on its socio-political effects, if any.
- Epistemology: Take a position
for or against truth. Prove the validity of your position.
- Physics: Explain the nature of
matter. Include in your answer an evaluation of the impact of the development
of mathematics on science.
- Philosophy: Sketch the development
of human thought; estimate its significance. Compare with the development
of any other kind of thought.
- General Knowledge: Describe in
detail. Be objective and specific.
* * Extra Credit* *
Define the universe; give three examples.