A High-Five Experiment

Final exam time is always a time of stress for students. When you have 6 exams in 6 days, the time just before the exam is one of general apprehension and attempts at mentally revising all the key points. Everybody notices that in the glum looks students have walking into the exam hall.

Fortunately, the fourth year in DA-IICT is pretty light, and due to a multitude of projects, me and Naman had only a couple of papers. Inspired by Charlie Todd’s TED video about Improv Everywhere we decided to inject some cheer into the poor souls of the other batches.

Four signs went up on Thursday, Nov 24, along the long, curved staircase leading to the hall.

They were nicely spaced out so only one could be seen at a time, and we were standing at the end of it, right at the entry doors.

As the students started coming in and the high-fives started flying, accompanied by words of encouragement (and the occasional “Heap sort is O(nlgn)”), it was very satisfying to see those faces light up in the happiness of an unexpected surprise and lose some of the pressure.

So go out and spread some cheer! You can freely use and modify the above images for a noble cause :) There will of course always be people who are unable to take in why someone would do something like this, they’ll walk past you without an upward glance. Others will eye you with suspicion even as they raise a half-hearted hand. Grumpy administrators will tell you you aren’t supposed to be in the examination area if you don’t have an examination. But on that day I saw the most introverted student give a resounding high-five back and walk with a spring in his step. It was worth it.

Posted via email from nikhil's posterous