During the Fall 2019 semester I took a chemistry course called Structure Determination. It was a course about how to determine the shape of mysterious chemical compounds via a variety of diagnostic tools. The professor who taught said course was, and still is, a staunch music lover. No era was out of bounds in his vast musical library. He would give us seemingly impossible practice questions to work on during class and would play music while we worked. Primarily to amuse himself rather than sitting at the front of the class staring at us sweating over bi-cycles or multi-ring structures. Or what we believed to be either and were usually not. It also had a calming effect on a portion of us.
The same professor has a few children, whom I am sure he adores. They are of an age that he can play more advanced pranks on them. He shared one of the pranks with us on one fall afternoon while sidetracked from the task at hand.
He explained that he had hatched a plot with one of the older children to swap out three of the younger child’s songs in their music library with Rick Astley’s 1987 hit Never Gonna Give You Up. Naturally he was met with blank stares from the members of Gen Z in the class, while the elderly ladies up front (myself included in that demographic) snickered. He went on to explain the concept of Rick Rolling. The genius of his diabolical plan was realized, and the class was politely amused at the antics of the ultimate dad move.
I should stop now and explain that Structure Determination is a pre-requisite for Advanced Organic: Synthesis, offered in Winter 2020. Many of the students in the room on that day went on to take Synthesis which was taught by the very same professor.
Fast forward to March 2020. We were motoring along. New concepts were flowing out at a blistering pace and then the unthinkable happened; the quarantine order was put in place and the university was shut down for face to face classes. The order was given three weeks before the end of the semester. We still had to cover the magic of palladium and had a late midterm exam scheduled for April 2. The exams were extremely challenging and written in pairs.
On the last Tuesday in March we had our final Zoom class. We discussed the exam and he set a due date of April 3 at noon. We were assigned our partners and the exam was posted for us to work on over the course of a few days. Being the final week of the semester and extremely hectic, my partner and I nibbled away at the exam between our other commitments. For me, that week culminated in 11,000 words written between three other classes, plus a final exam. It was the very definition of time management under extreme pressure. I ate that elephant one bite at a time. I don’t know how, but I did.
On April 1, he posted a link under the Exam 3 folder. “Exam Help,” it said. My partner and I were working on the exam at the exact moment the extra post went live. My partner had also been in Structure Determination and present on that fateful autumn day. Forgetting everything that we had been taught, we optimistically opened the link on our respective computers. We were desperate. It was a video which started with his concentrating face. Thinking that we were about to be imparted with hints that would crack open the mystery of question one, we waited. Then the music began. That familiar opening riff emanated from my laptop speakers. My shoulders slumped. My eyes closed. My head shook. I touched my face. I began to laugh. Then, he began to dance. My partner, who was watching on her computer howled in bemused frustration. She was hoping for the same thing I had been when I foolishly clicked on the link.
Having had several of our lectures provided as videos on YouTube, we were comfortable with this delivery method. He tended to use his arms to explain how certain reactions happened. There he was at his house, in all of his professor glory, dancing. I began to think he was doing a complex interpretive dance. Was that what I think it was? Were we forming the ring in the question that way? I watched about half of the video and then went back to my notes.
Two days later, while we were working on the same exam again (back to question one after completing the rest of it), it hit me. Right between the eyeballs. That link was posted on April Fool’s Day.
April. Fool’s. Day.
What a fool I was for not seeing it before. Then the brilliance of the prank began to seep in somewhere deep within my brain, like a spectre forming out of mist. A rapid-fire montage of the past six months crystalized in my mind. He planted the seed that autumn day. He nurtured us with his brand of shenanigans. He inoculated the class with the knowledge of the Rick Roll. We, or at least I, should have seen this coming. Then, in a twist of fate, an opportunity presented itself. Offered up on a silver platter embossed with a health order that would require us to communicate via video. We were a captive audience in our homes with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
As it turned out, the interpretive dance was my stress reading into the situation. In the end my partner and I did fairly well on the exam, all things considered.
But he who Rick Rolls a stressed-out group of third- and fourth-year university students had the last laugh. A nuanced prank of legendary proportions such as this will probably never be repeated.
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