by Maneesh Sethi

What is citizenship? In your school, it may be called participation, work ethic, whatever. Basically, it’s just a way for school officials to try and make you work hard in class because it shows up on your transcript. Believe me, one of the most annoying things ever is to look at your transcript and see straight A’s in your grades column and also see B’s or worse in the citizenship column. I’ve wondered how someone can be off-task if they are succeeding in a class.

There are three citizenship classifications for teachers:

1) Teachers who actually record the amount of times you raise your hand in class.

2) Teachers who never tell you to quiet down or stop talking in class, but smack you with a B when the report card comes along.

3) Teachers who plainly don’t give a damn what you do.

Obviously, #3 is your best bet for getting an A in the citizenship portion of the class.

Let’s get straight to the meat of this chapter. We begin with planning before you take the class.

Before School Starts

Before you even start the class, you should find out about all of your teachers. Figure out which ones will be the easy, laid back ones, and which will be the hard-ass-I’m-going-to-make-you-work-hard-even-there-is-no-reason teachers. When you find out who your teachers are (when you get your class schedule), immediately find some students who took the class last year. Ask them questions about the teacher. Some example questions would be

1) What kind of teacher is he/she? (from the list above)

2) How tough is this class?

3) Will the teacher mark me tardy or absent if I am not on time?

Of course, these are only some example questions. I bet you can think of a few more.

If you are a freshman, you might be worried that you don’t know anyone in high school. Just try and meet some sophomores or juniors in your first week of school and ask them these question. You will most likely be able to answer them quicker than you think.

Teacher #1 – Those who record participation

These teachers friggin’ suck. Why it is necessary to count how much you participate is beyond me, and unfortunately, they are the hardest to trick. The secret to getting good citizenship in their class is to simply raise your hand a lot.

Now you may not want to raise your hand a lot. Maybe you just want to go to sleep in class. Well here is what you do. For the first ten minutes or so of class, just raise your hand as much as you can. After you have answered a few questions, she won’t call on you anymore.

When she stops calling on you, watch when the teacher asks a question. Does anyone else put their hand up? If so, put yours up, because there is a good chance the teacher will call on the other person rather than you.

By doing this, you can easily trick your teacher into giving you participation points when you didn’t even know the answer.

By the way, some teachers give you extra credit when you raise your hands. These teachers are awesome, because you can stockpile these points and not have to worry as much about a test, final, or whatever. With these teachers, try and raise your hand as much as you want.

That’s it for teacher #1. In summary, raise your hand at the beginning of class (or for a good part of the year, all the time), until he or she stops calling on you.

Teacher #2 – Those who don’t tell you to be quiet

These teachers are worse than those who tell you to shut up. With these, you have no idea if you are pissing the teacher off or not. The best way to get a good grade in this class is to sit far away from the teacher.

The farther away you sit, the less of a chance the teacher has of seeing you not do your work. Make sure you keep one eye on your teacher. If he or she is looking directly at you, pretend to be working.

Another tip: if you are talking to a friend and your teacher walks by you, immediately begin talking about the homework. For example,if you are in math and you and a friend are talking about a hot girl (or guy) on the other side of the class, and you see your teacher getting within hearing range, say something like, “No dude, the sin of π/3 is √3/2!” or whatever you are studying at the time. Your teacher won’t be as mad if you are talking about your subject than if you are talking about something else.

Ever fallen asleep in class? In this teacher’s class, you have to be careful because you can get in serious trouble if you do. If you are resting your head, at least make it look like you are working, so keep a hand on the pencil, face your homework, and do whatever else it takes to look like you are doing work.

If your teacher catches you talking or not working, all you do is say, “Sorry” and get to work. Real work. The teacher will be watching you for the rest of the class, and you really don’t want to appear off task.

Anyway, that is just about it for teacher #2. Sit as far back as you can, watch the teacher always, and try to pretend like you are always working.

Teacher #3 – Those who don’t care

Teacher #3 is the best teacher of all. Typically in this class, you get an A in citizenship no matter what. It’s easy to tell which type of teacher is a #3 also – if the teacher seems like a nice laid back guy or girl, it will most likely be #3.

The trick to getting an A in this class is simply not to piss of the teacher. You have a lot more freedom to do what you want to do, but you still can’t break anything or make fun of the teacher’s kids. Hopefully, you wouldn’t do these things anyway, but just be safe and don’t act retarded.

There isn’t much to tell about these teachers. A lot of the time, if you get on their good side, you can hang out with the teacher after class and he or she won’t care. They can be really cool.

That’s it for teacher #3. Now we move on to how to raise your citizenship grade if you haven’t followed the above rules.

Getting yourself out of trouble

If you have ever tried to change your actual grade in a class, you may have found it difficult, if not impossible. However, citizenship is completely different. Most (not all, though) teachers wait until that last day of the grading session to issue your citizenship grade, so the trick to getting your grade raised in citizenship is usually to simply be good for the last few weeks before the teacher decides the grades.

I recommend that you work on being a hard worker for the first and last 3 weeks of each semester, at least. Also, if you get progress reports that list your citizenship, you also want to be really good for a week or two before each citizenship grade.

Just being good may not work though. Sometimes, you need to raise that grade at the end, without any doubts. Here is what you do.

If you get citizenship grades on your progress reports and you got A’s on all of those reports before the semester grade, point that face out to your teacher. Show the teacher that you have been good for most of the semester, and therefore, you should get the A. But what if you didn’t get those A’s.

Well, the first thing you can do is lie. This isn’t recommended by me, but you may want to, I don’t know. Most teachers won’t double check their citizenship grades, and if they do, you can always say “Oh, I was wrong, sorry.”

There is a better tactic than lying though. This method, while not foolproof, preserves your honor, sharpens your wit, and gets you citizenship points in the form of pity.

Go up to the teacher one to two weeks before the grades are decided. Ask what your citizenship grade is. If the teacher says A, congratulations, you have won. If the teacher says, “I haven’t decided yet,” you make him or her decide right there. Ask probing questions like “What do you think I will get?” or “What can I do to raise my citizenship grade?” DO NOT leave until the teacher says you got an A. If he or she says you received a B, make sure you get confirmation that your grade can change.

Raising your grade is possible just by asking, “What can I do to raise my grade?” Keep fighting until you get an answer. You have to judge when you are between being forceful and annoying, you obviously want to quit when you are annoying. After you feel that you have made your point, say thanks and leave. From then on, you have to work hard and be good in the class, otherwise your citizenship grade will falter.

So that is basically all there is to citizenship. Just learn to play the teacher following the guidelines above, and never be content with a low grade – you can always get it changed. Good luck!

Update: eBay has removed the link. The google cache of this auction is located here.

This kid, Ron Steen, just put himself up for auction. I mean that literally: 2% of his future income will go to the highest bidder. The minimum bid price is $100,000. Whether or not this is legal in the first place, it is nonetheless a terrible investment, for several reasons.

First of all, note that I do not think that buying stock in a person is a bad idea. My brother pitched me this idea years ago, and just today I was thinking that this would be an interesting enterprise—getting hundreds of students to pitch 1% of their future earnings in return for $25,000, and then selling shares of that return to interested investors. I think that would be a cool business, I might even sell my income in that case.

However, this investment is terrible. First of all, we need to take a look at the proposition he gives. If you win the auction, you begin to make money after he graduates from college, in 2012 only until 2052. Take a look at this chart made by FatAlbert from reddit.com.

If you invest your money now at an average 8% interest (optimistically, you can even make more than that), and you invest every check he gives you, at the end of the day you have lost $600,000. And that is assuming that by 2052, he is making $2,128,327 a year. Do you know anyone graduating straight out of Cal State Fullerton making $250k?
So even if he hits his goal of making $30 million dollars, you have still lost a hell of a lot of money. In the even more likely case, he won’t even approach that $30 million number, and you have just lost way more.
But let’s assume you think he would be able to make this amount of money, because he seems like a standup, trustworthy guy. Right? Wrong. Look at some of the answers to his questions on the auction.

Q: Have you thought about offering something more like 15 or 20%? The current promise of 2% doesn’t make you sound like a very impressive investment. … You might be have better luck just begging somebody for money with no strings attached. –Lizzy
A: : Lizzy, Your ending comment was very rood and insensitive. I am going to make tons of money and if you believe me you can ride the wave, if not than I guess it is your loss. I didn’t think to hard about your idea, since I have more questions than I could possibly answer. If I were even considering selling a whopping 15 % of myself, I would go for millions, because I am worth it….

Really, the comment was rood? What about this one.

Q: You do realize that with a competent money manager, a wealthy person can just let the $100,000 dollars sit and, at modest 7% returns a year, make six times in less than 20 years?
A: Yes, this would be an optimal investment for wealthy people, but investing in companies like Phillip Morris and Altria Co. can gain you 7% but its products are harmful; for example ciggarettes. Also, their is not one can do to increase the value of shares of stock. In my investment, you gain forty checks for the lifetime of the contract and also have an enjoyable time in the process. Thank you for your intrest.

That’s right, they do make harmful products, like ciggarettes. If only investors had an option to invest in whatever company they wanted to, such as companies that don’t make harmful products. Also, he can’t spell intrest, and there are some grammar mistakes too.

At least he has a pretty solid background in education, right? Again, wrong.

He may have a 3.5 GPA. (Not uncommon at all). He might be going to a university (Cal State Fullerton). But he has an impressive 1550 SAT score right? That’s damn high…hell that is higher than 95% of the people at Stanford!

Wait wait, that’s right they changed the test. It’s out of 2400 now. 1550/2400 isn’t so impressive. You know what else isn’t impressive? That the score is a lie. Read that again.

Ron Steen did not get a 1550.

I emailed Ron and asked him for his breakdown in Math/Verbal scores. Here is the response I got.

“900/650 Thank you-Ron”

Read that again, and see if you can catch the error. Oh yeah! SAT SCORES ONLY GO UP TO 800. Ron is literally lying about his SAT scores, and he didn’t even lie well!

Don’t trust this guy. He isn’t even telling the truth about his scores.

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<girl> hey, do you lend out your car at all?

Hrm, I wonder if she wants me to help her out?

<girl>i was trying to go to the beach today with some people, but then a driver backed out, and now i’m trying to find another car last minute, but it’s not as easy as I hoped it would be

Wait for it. Here’s the kicker.

<girl>actually, if you want, you’re welcome to come along

Oh really? If I drive you, it’s okay if I come? As opposed to your first request of just taking my car? Why, thank you so much for the (backhanded) invitation!

The funny thing about this conversation is that it easily could have taken a very different turn if this girl had done a few things differently. These tactics can be used in many situations to make anyone do your bidding.

1. Start a conversation without immediately asking for a favor - It would have been nice if she had started off by asking how I was doing. Maybe even just a ‘hey,’ would have been a hell of a lot better. Keep in mind, I rarely rarely ever talk to this girl: maybe once a month—and I always initiate the conversation. This brings us to #2.
2. If you can imagine ever needing a person’s help, at least keep in touch a little bit - If you don’t hate someone, it is always easy to have a conversation with someone at least once a week or so. This conversation was on INSTANT MESSENGER, it really is not hard to keep in touch with someone when you know exactly when they are available and when they aren’t. I used to IM her about twice a week to say hello, and our conversations were always short, “Hi.” “Hi, I can’t talk right now sorry bye.” That happened SO MUCH it got to the point when I just gave up. Since this is IM, you don’t even need to devote your whole concentration to the conversation, hell you can play a video game while talking to the person. Let’s look at #3.
3. If you want a favor done, you damn well better include them in the activity - You want to go to the beach? That’s cool. Only one person you know has a car? INVITE THEM TOO. She did invite me, it just took her a while to get to that point. First off, she just wanted to ‘borrow’ my car. Taking my car so she can hang out with her better friends isn’t a borrow. It’s a jack.
4. Be at least a little sly about asking for a favor - If you want someone to do you a favor, especially someone you aren’t great friends with, you need to put a little thought into how you are going to ask for the favor. Make it seem like you are talking to them about a problem you are having. Let them offer the solution. If she asked me to come with her to the beach, and then said, “the only problem is we don’t have a car, do you know anyone who could help?” I probably would have driven her.
5. If the person honestly can’t or won’t help you out, don’t burn bridges - After I didn’t respond for a few minutes to her final request for me to drive, here is what she said.
   

   <girl>if you don’t want to lend out your car or come along, that’s fine. i can try and figure something else out

   Now I’m probably over-analyzing this last statement, but it seems like she could’ve been a lot nicer when I said no. The sarcasm in this last comment, coupled with a plea for me to fix her situation just seems, well, bitchy. I sure ain’t gonna help now.

Let’s look at a different way this conversation could’ve gone.

<girl> hey, how are you?
<me> I’m fine, what’s up?
<girl> Not much, I’m planning on going to the beach with a few friends today. Do you want to come along?
<me> Oh really? Yeah, I’d love to. How are you guys getting there?
<girl> I’m not sure yet…Public transportation doesn’t go there, and it’s pretty far. None of us have a car, either, but hopefully we can find someone who does.
<girl> Do you have any ideas?
<me> Yeah, I have a car, sure I’d be glad to go.

So simple, so useful. The major trick here! MAKE SURE THE PERSON YOU WANT THE FAVOR FROM BELIEVES HE IS COMING UP WITH THE IDEA. In this sample conversation, I’m part of the planning process, and I have a solution. Of course I’ll help.

Needless to say, I didn’t drive her anywhere. Also, I deleted her off my buddy list. Lame.

Welcome to the group of the lazy.

-Maneesh Sethi