When you’re in 11th grade, a cheap victory is still a victory
By Doug Campbell 

This piece originally appeared in the October 10 edition of the Cazenovia Republican. 

When Kurt Wheeler told our class the incentive for getting a perfect score on the regents exam would be free dinner at the Brewster, we were all pretty excited.

But, being conniving high schoolers, one of us suggested a loophole.

“If we guess the people from our class who score perfectly, can we come too?” someone asked.

I don’t know how we convinced him, but Mr. Wheeler must have thought, “there is no way that they could guess the winners,” so he agreed. What were the odds of guessing not only how many people would score perfectly, but which ones?

He wasn’t counting on the wiliness of Zac Inman, Nick Ciarelli and me.

We guessed zero.

And in a particularly difficult year for the regents exam, it turned out … we were right! It was a sad day for academia, but a good day for our tastebuds.

My. Wheeler, being a man of his word, agreed to take us to dinner, with a caveat: he proposed a more inexpensive dinner at Albert’s, calling our cunning victory a “cheap” one. 

He may have been right. But the chicken tenders and French fries were delicious, cheap victory or not.

When I saw an announcement come in saying Mr. Wheeler had taken three students to dinner in honor of their achievement, I proudly remembered my story.

But really, our “accomplishment” (tricking our high school history teacher) pales in comparison to that of these three students who managed to get perfect scores. Extra kudos go to Taylor Malmsheimer, who joins the “205 Club;” Taylor managed to get two perfect scores on both her history regents as well as a perfect score of 5 on her US History AP exam. Now there is a remarkable achievement.

So maybe our hoodwinking of Mr. Wheeler wasn’t the most impressive accomplishment.

But I think it makes a good story.

Doug Campbell is editor of the Cazenovia Republican. He graduated from Cazenovia High School in 2004.