Players up and down the benches of baseball teams don rally
caps, turning their hats inside out to elicit a late-game run or
two from the baseball gods. Football players will wear the same
ratty T-shirt from high school under their jersey for good luck.
Fans watching the game at home will sit in the exact same position
for every game and throw a fit if someone tries to switch it
up.
These things matter.
Superstitions are a part of sports. A big part. Every sport has
its own set of unwritten rules for the mystical unknown. If a
pitcher is throwing a no-hitter, no one talks to him in the dugout.
If a fan at the game mentions that the pitcher is on track to throw
a no-hitter, he has to spend the rest of the game in the parking
lot. Or leave the area code, depending on the seriousness of the
infraction.
Sports superstitions are well-documented. The anthropological
phenomenon that has yet to mature into full form is the culture of
midterm superstition. I’m not talking about strategy.
I’m not talking about studying the entire week beforehand,
getting a good night’s sleep, and taking your best shot at
the test. I’m talking about the little good-luck charms and
test deities to appeal to once you’ve already missed the
first boat.
Students can take a page out of a sports’ playbook when it
comes down to crunch time. For example, in most classes you have a
seat where you always sit. If you go to all or most of the
lectures, you get used to it. Come game day, you don’t want
to sit anywhere else. Why play a road game when you can have the
home crowd surrounding you?
To ensure that you get the same seat, you need to show up early
to the test to ward off the fair-weather classgoer who may swoop in
on the karma you’ve been warming up in that spot. It’s
a standard issue for a class to balloon in size by 300 percent on
the day of the midterm, so you’ve got to stake your claim
early.
When it comes to different subjects, there are likewise
different approaches. Rally caps work especially well for
literature midterms, while rolling up the left sleeve and sporting
a backward hat are better suited for biochemistry.
The art of body and face paint that many students use at
football games was actually originally developed for history tests,
but lost favor when teachers were suspicious of students using it
as a cheat-sheet system. Some genius had to incorporate a visual
representation of the Norman conquest of England onto his forehead.
Thanks for ruining it for everybody.
It is possible to go too far, however, in search of the perfect
midterm score. Moises Alou of the San Francisco Giants pees on his
hands early in the season for the purpose of toughening them up.
That is some serious tough love. This method is only for the
student in serious need. If you haven’t read at all, been to
less than three lectures, and studied for an hour, then maybe take
a shot at it. But no one else.
The best thing about a superstition is that you can make it up
the first time you try it. If it works, run with it. Superstitions
can be like obscure baseball stats. For example, I am batting a
perfect 1.000 on getting an A on a midterm taken on a Tuesday when
the sun is half-blocked by clouds with light precipitation and a
slight breeze from the northwest. If the test conditions
don’t fit, I just ask the teacher to reschedule and explain
that I don’t want to tempt fate. If it ain’t broke,
don’t fix it. Surprisingly I’ve had trouble with this
one, but I haven’t given up.
E-mail bgordon@media.ucla.edu if you have your own midterm
superstition to contribute to the official study being
conducted.