Taught a not-introductory yet not-advanced economics class today, at the end of the which one of my better students, an Ethiopian, started talking about the midterm he had just taken. He wanted to take the midterm home with him.
"Sorry, not allowed," I said. I reminded him of the university rule which states that midterms belong to the university. After a student hands in a midterm, he only sees it again for a couple of minutes to review his grade. Then I snatch it away and hide it in a drawer for eternity.
Then he asked an odd question. "Was the midterm mine when I was taking the test?" he asked.
"No. But the midterm doesn't belong to me either. Even though I wrote it. The university owns it."
That got the conversation moving off in a strange, fun direction. As I was writing the midterm, if I thought of a question and decided it was a good one, I added it to the midterm and it instantly became university property. If I decided it was bad and discarded it, then the idea remained my property.
I only own my bad ideas.
So the student asked if his answers were his property.
In that case, both his right and wrong answers--good and bad ideas alike--remained the property the university.
Then he asked, "Does anyone else from the university ever see the midterms?"
No one ever has, I admitted.
"The university doesn't know it exists," he said.
"They know but don't care."
This answer seemed to please him. He asked if he could review his midterm for just a few minutes. I said okay. I retrieved it from my office, where he sat looking it over. Then he handed it back to me, and I returned it to the stacks.
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