Written by Zach Siddiqui, Humour Editor

Though the Spring 2020 semester has just started, most of SFU’s student body reportedly cannot name their courses from last semester when asked. 

Students all over SFU’s three campuses engaged this morning in their first round of empty first-day-back small talk of the new decade. Witnesses report that whenever a student was asked what courses they had taken in the fall, they could only offer the course numbers. 

“nobody has ever taken enough interest in an SFU student to actually ask for details about what they study.”

According to Jared Allen, second-year English student, one reason students may have trouble learning course names is that those names are often irrelevant to the course content.

“Apparently, ENGL 104 is called Introduction to Prose Genres,” he said. “But I still don’t know what a prose genre is. All we looked at were weird Russian paintings from the 20th century. I got a B+ and I didn’t even know how to read.”

Other students cited a simple lack of need: allegedly, until recently, nobody has ever taken enough interest in an SFU student to actually ask for details about what they study.

“I’ve always just gotten by on the course number,” shrugged Katie Sai, a third-year. “A date did once ask me the name of CMPT 371. Nearly flubbed it too. But I just told him that he wasn’t a computing science student, so it wasn’t like he could ever really get what I do, anyway.”

Still, others have argued that the SFU administration is not only fully aware of the culture around course names and numbers, but also actively encourages it. 

“They’re trying to brainwash us, to destroy our identities, by making us talk in numbers over and over,” stressed Molly Diggler, a fourth-year philosophy student. “They’re going to give us assignments, march us around under the light of the full moon, and stop us from ever spreading our wings.” 

However, the student may have actually been describing the plot of the first book from Guardians of Ga’Hoole, an early-2000s children’s novel series about talking owls. 

Reportedly, Allen still doesn’t know how to read. 

The Peak has yet to interview a student who knows their tutorial number.