Professor Snarf's Calculus Exam

PROFESSOR SNARF'S CALCULUS EXAM

Professor Snarf gave a calculus exam today,
He said it would be as simple as pie.
But when he told us to begin,
I thought that I would die.

He trotted out limits, he dangled integration,
He demanded the solution to Laplace's equation.
A Riemann integral, the Riemann sum,
There were more limits on this test than in all Christendom.
Ratio tests, M-tests, pap-tests, and infinity,
Followed for what I know was the Holy Trinity.
And then I soiled my BVD's
When he asked about vector analyses.
And then he shook up my cerebral architecture,
When he asked for a proof of the Riemann Conjecture.
Then something about the Hopf bifurcation,
And oh God, another Laplace's equation !

But Professor Snarf said he'd scale our grades,
And told us not to cry.
But when he returned my test to me,
I thought that I would die.

He exposed my surds, he refuted my queries,
He even poked holes in my infinite series.
He knocked down my limits and then he would gloat,
He even took umbrage with my asymptote.
He said my theorems did not deduce,
And blithely crossed off my hypotenuse.
And once he got going he never looked back,
Until my exam was covered in black.
And finally he nixed my line integration,
And, oh God! he even marked off my Laplace's equation.

~Nats Wolraf~

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