On a Scale from Idiot to Complete Jerk by Alison Hughes Page A

they were unusual, dramatic events. Most of the time, school is way less exciting, following a predictable, often grinding routine of same old, same old, day after day. The focus of this chapter is on the more day-to-day, routine opportunities for jerks to be jerks.
    A) Students

    It might appear that this topic isn’t even very challenging, because everyone knows that kids at school can be idiots and jerks. It’s totally obvious, even to non-sciencey types. So in this section I decided to do something different. I looked at patterns of jerkish behavior. Does jerkish behavior even follow a pattern? Does it peak at certain times of the day? Can one jerk acting jerkish cause other people to act like jerks? Prepare yourself for some amazingly impressive graphs.
    CASE STUDY #8
The Arc of Jerkish Behavior
    Subjects: No real names will be used in this example, to prevent my having unpleasant experiences if this report ever gets seen by somebody other than my teacher. So, say there’s this known jerk at school who has blond, not black, hair. He’s also got green, not brown, eyes. This known jerk is really, really good at math and is not on any sports teams. We’ll call him Kevin. Any resemblance to any real person or persons in this case study is purely accidental.
    Laboratory: Math class
    Experiment: Kevin is a guy who goes looking for ways to be a jerk. There is no doubt that he is a jerk (ask absolutely anyone at my school). So in this experiment, I decided to observe not whether Kevin is a jerk, but how he is a jerk.
    Observations: Kevin hates math class because…because he’s so good at it. Yeah, because he’s so good at math. He’s bored. He looks around. He crumples paper and fires it at a nearby girl’s head. She ignores him, so he looks around some more. The student in front of him is working. Kevin grabs his ruler and pushes the other kid’s arm so that his pencil goes skidding across the page. Again and again Kevin does this, despite the kid becoming more and more upset. The substitute teacher looks up from whatever she’s doing (reading a novel? texting?) and tells him to “stop it, mister.”
    Kevin then waits until the substitute teacher figures she should probably at least pretend to teach something, just in case another teacher walks by. When the kid next to him is trying to answer a question, Kevin whispers random numbers, just to confuse him. “Four, nineteen, seventy…[giggle, giggle]…six.” The guy’s a total idiot as well as a complete jerk. Anyway, when the teacher’s back is turned to the class, Kevin quietly rushes to the window. He slips out and slides down a nearby tree to the ground floor.
    When we all look out, Kevin is across the field at the elementary-school playground, flinging the swings so hard that they go around and around the bar until they’re too short for the little kids who are looking forward to using them when recess rolls around. When he’s finished wrecking the swings, he wanders around the field aimlessly. Later that afternoon, the school custodian has to bring a ladder out to fix the swings.
    I could go on. Kevin could probably fill up this project. But I won’t, because it’s illustration time.
    Scientific Illustration #5: Bell Graph of a Jerk

    This bell graph, which is a kind of graph often used for
illustrating important scientific things (and not only bells),
shows how a school jerk’s jerkitude builds steadily, then peaks.
Apparently, jerks have to wake up fully to really embrace
their inner jerk and sustain a period of busy jerkishness.
Then boredom or exhaustion sets in, and jerkitude diminishes.
Jerkish behavior clearly takes a lot of energy.
    Conclusions: Kevin became a jerk gradually during this math class. He sort of slid up the scale from idiot to jerk, peaked at complete jerk, then slid down as he got more tired or bored.
    Jerkosity seems almost impossible to sustain over a