Tales of a 4-Time QRR Failure

A few weeks ago I underwent, for the fourth time, that most charming of Harvard's freshman initiation rituals, the computer portion of the Quantitative Reasoning Requirement.

I got my test and wrote my program, solving the compelling problem of helping Fred Frosh find his way to the computer room printer. It was not extremely difficult, but was nonetheless challenging to the average Sunday-driver computer programmer like myself who took only BASIC programming in high school.

I took my time writing the program, and when I was reasonably sure it was correct, I headed for a terminal and started typing it into the computer. Since it had a few kinks, I fussed over it a bit, but I finally got it to work.

It was flawless. Fred Frosh would never get lost again.

Then it was time to print my lovely program.

I carefully typed, "bye," which I had memorized as the first command to print my program. "goodbye," responded the computer, much more meaningfully than I knew at the time.

I then followed the rest of the sequence (I thought) of printing commands which I had managed to pick out of the guide booklets touted at the Science Center. When I typed in the final command and pressed "return," I hailed the passing computer room aide who was rushing by and asked him if my program was printing.

He barely glanced at my screen and bustled away, leaving me totally confused. The next time he rushed by I snagged him again and he deigned to tell me that--surprise, surprise--I had done something wrong.

I was in shock. I was determined not to fail the QRR for the fourth time, not when I was so close to victory.

But even if time was running short and I was cursed with an extraordinarily unsympathetic computer room staffer, I was not yet ready to give up. I thought about the commands I had used, and realizing my error, I started to correct it. It was then that I ran into Problem Number Two.

When I typed on the keyboard, nothing appeared on the screen. The cursor was nowhere in sight. I hailed (I'll call him "Bob") again and explained my problem. He gave me a disdainful and impatient smile and said, "Well, what do you do when that happens?" and rushed away to help someone else.

"Well, Bob," I muttered through my teeth, "if I knew I wouldn't be asking." I racked my brains--the computer booklets have nothing about this sort of situation in them--and resorted to Bob again. He hinted that I needed to press a specific button. I hit "break" for lack of any other option; it worked.

By this time I had about two minutes left before the computer was going to cut me off and I was growing more and more frantic. I was so close to passing...and besides, no one was stupid enough to fail the QRR four times.

I failed when time ran out. I nearly had a breakdown in the middle of the Science Center.

THE idea of a computer proficiency test has some merit; like knowing a foreign language, everyone should be acquainted with computers and have a rudimentary knowledge of their usage.

Our daily lives are affected by computers--schools and governments keep our records on computer files, we get our cash from computer-operated automatic tellers and word processors make it possible to write one draft of our 10-page papers.

I find it difficult, however, to understand the value of knowing how to manipulate Harvard University's confusing and archaic computer system. I see no sense in having to know the eight steps to print a program on a system that I will probably never want to use again. I have to remember only one button to press on my IBM-compatible word processor and on my roommate's MacIntosh to print something.

Should I find that I need to use the University's computer system, it won't kill me not to have the commands memorized. I could simply look them up, or better yet, ask a member of the computer room staff--like Bob, for example.

I realize that it is not such a great mental burden to memorize eight commands to pass this ridiculous test. Had I felt it was worth the time and effort to pick through the booklets to learn the intricacies of "the script command," I could have spared myself much mental anguish. But it is not worth wasting precious time learning something useless that will soon be forgotten.

That Harvard wants its students to be computer-literate is a fine, even an admirable sentiment. But the poorly designed QRR requirement is not the way to do it.