Innovative research on inducing of maximal misery
With final exams fast approaching, overall misery levels on campus are rising steadily. While CMU is one of the top schools in the nation in overall misery production per student, several changes can be implemented to greatly increase this ratio.
Misery is defined as the aggregate sum of various negative emotions such as stress, sadness, pain, jealousy, and others I don’t really care to list. Examining the misery report from last finals season, CMU generated a large portion of its misery output from stress, which has one of the highest known misery conversion ratios. Stress achieves this by decaying into several strong negative emotions over time, with a single misery particle decaying into three depression particles and an imposter syndrome particle, with other trace emotions such as psychosis and rage occasionally being emitted as well.
While CMU is very effective at stress production during finals, there are several flaws in this system. Some classes are curved or otherwise grade-adjusted, which has been found to slightly decrease stress and thus overall misery levels. An obvious solution would be to remove grade adjustments across all courses, but recent studies have shown a more effective method. By stating that the class will be curved at the beginning of the year, and allotting a certain number of dropped assignments, students are lulled into a very low stress state. By applying a strong enough shock to the system around finals, stress levels are observed to sharply rise to a level much higher than what is normally possible. This effect is correlated with the strength of the shock, so for the given example a good idea would be to announce a week or two before finals that no assignments will be dropped and no curve will be applied. In addition, by not applying this shock to a small percentage of courses, misery loss via the shared burden effect can be minimized, with the benefit of also increasing envy production.
Weather is known to affect overall misery rate, with pleasant weather corresponding to upwards of a 30% loss in misery production, while sufficiently poor weather can double production under ideal conditions. This is one of the reasons why CMU’s fall production is so high, as Pittsburgh’s weather in early December is typically grey, cold, windy, and wet. Unfortunately, finals week weather is not always in this state. By seeding the clouds or using magic, CMU could alter the weather to ensure that the entire week will be bitterly cold and drizzly. This could also have applications for spring semester manipulation, although this remains unproven.
The best proven method, however, is announcing a 4% tuition raise the week before finals.