This was posted on my friend John Martin’s blog. He is an astronomer and an educator, like myself. As finals roll around and students realize that slacking off in the class is going to have consequences, they get… creative. Here is John’s post:

This warning should be posted under my class in the course offering directory:

WARNING The Astronomy-Physics program has determined that doing poorly in Astronomy 101 may have deleterious impact beyond your GPA. Students failing Astronomy 101 report a higher incidence of: deaths of grandparents, close relatives who discover they have cancer, chronic personal health problems, influenza outbreak, computer hardware failure, traffic accidents, complete melt down of their university email account, death of beloved pets, and inability to find adequate child-care services. A high degree of correlation has been observed, however the cause-effect relationship is still under study. Students should be advised to enroll in this course and take it lightly at their own risk.

[From Warning About Doing Poorly in Astronomy Class]