Jan sat center left on the third row of the lecture hall. For a graduate class in Philosophical Reasoning, it was a large class. There were actually nine graduate students struggling to make a contribution to modern philosophical thinking, and to pass the god damn course.
Dr. Johnson, speaking with hands as well as voice, said. “You will have two hours to answer one question: Define God. Do it simply but do it well. If you need to write a book, you will probably fail. If you have read my suggested readings and contributed in class, you have a good chance of passing. There are only two possible grades. An ‘A’ for excellent or an ‘F’ for ‘you fail.’ I ask no quarter, and I give none. Good luck. Class dismissed.”
Jan walked to the student union for a cup of coffee. While drinking she reviewed her options and her standings. She had an ‘A’ average in everything, almost consistently from her junior year to her last year of the Master’s program. Only once did she fuck a professor to keep her high average and while she probably would bed Johnson, she really thought it would not make even an iota of difference. Besides, she grinned inwardly, she was rapidly making a name for herself not only in philosophy but mathematics as well. She felt she would pass this test because she was smart. All thinking of alternative plans will now stop, and in her mind they did.
The next day she turned in her exam book in ten minutes and left the examination hall.
Later over a beer, Martin Devroe asked. “What the hell did you answer to get the only ‘A’?”
She giggled, “God is the square root of negative one.”
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