Beating The Game

Victor Frost

There's this thing going on at my school. Some organization is paying every student $150 in Amazon giftcards if they volunteer to participate in a standardized test of sorts. You have to do it for about 2.5 hours every wednesday for three weeks. The test broken up into two 40 minute sessions with a five minute break in between.
Today is my Week 2, and about halfway through the first part, I just stopped. I had remembered that the email announcing this had said that the results of the test would not go on my academic record.
A realization swept over me and a smile crept across my face; a smile like a cat that just swallowed the canary.
It didn't matter what I put down on this test. I could fill all the bubbles randomly and it wouldn't matter one god dammed bit.
But I decided not to keep this information to myself.
When the five minute break arrived, I waited until everyone came back from the water fountain, and approached the proctor.

Me: Excuse me, I have a question about the test.
P: Yes?
Me: The results of this test aren't put onto our academic record, right? It's not like its gonna be on our transcript is it?
P: That's correct, It's completely voluntary.
Me: And as long as I complete the test, I'll get my $150 amazon gift card, right?
P: Right.
Me: So, hypothetically, I could just fill in the bubbles at random and leave, and I'll still get my gift card. Right?
P: Well, that's not the purpose of this test, but, yes, you could.
Me: Thanks.

After that, I went back to my seat. As soon as he finished explaining the instructions, I filled in every remaining bubble "a" and approached him with the test. At first he didn't seem to know why I was there, holding the packet of answer sheet and test booklet, but then he started laughing.

Proctor: Are you finished?
Me: Yup.

After he took my packet, I made sure he signed me out, and left. Hopefully others did the same.


So, When was the last time you beat the game?

...

When I read xkcd and it told me that I had just won the game.

Lusankya

That's win and awesome. I wrote a Firefox extension that would automatically complete Web Perspectives surveys. By filling out the first five or so questions to get into the actual survey, you can guarantee that you'll get your money at the end of it. Since I'm now employed, I didn't bother to modify it to work with the new system they have for surveys.

Sail

I just lost.

WaterInThere

That's win and awesome. I wrote a Firefox extension that would automatically complete Web Perspectives surveys. By filling out the first five or so questions to get into the actual survey, you can guarantee that you'll get your money at the end of it. Since I'm now employed, I didn't bother to modify it to work with the new system they have for surveys.

did that actually work? I've always had the impression things of that type on the Internet were either scams or just wouldn't pay off.

Lusankya

did that actually work? I've always had the impression things of that type on the Internet were either scams or just wouldn't pay off.

They're pretty much the only legit operation on the intertubes. When I was back in high school they even offered me an invitation to a sweet survey where I carried a special Palm PDA. It was rigged to only run their special survey software, but I'd log whatever I drank in it, when I drank it, and it used the clock and a GPS dongle to determine the nature of the purchase. I got paid $100 for doing this for a week.

Wings

I've had tests like that before- Tests that don't count at all. I think you're unoriginal for just filling in all a's, however. You should have written awesome words, like
badbadbad or cabcabcab or dabdabdab.