I have a major problem and a crazy idea. For you to appreciate the idea’s potential genius, though, I have to explain the problem.

Consider for a moment: It’s now November, and though you’re barely over your Halloween candy binge, there’s a whole new unpleasant feeling in the pit of your stomach. That 3,000 word paper you were assigned back in September? Your prof expects it at the end of the week, if you expect to pass.

Normally it’d be no big deal. Get a grande latte, chain yourself to a library desk, and get ‘er done. But something has gone wrong, and instead of a brilliant thesis floating into your head, all you’ve got in there is the new Weezer single about the guy that can’t stop partying. Clearly, it’s a sign. You close your books.

Your aching organs the next day are giving you another sign, as you inch inexorably closer to d-day. You spend a day freaking out, and another one cleaning your room with obsessive-compulsive thoroughness, just so that you have a good mental environment to work in.

Now your sock drawer is organized chronologically, but the clever angle to that essay still eludes you. You try everything for inspiration – pacing, eating a pound of chocolate, sleeping on it. All that cocoa give you fever dreams where red Fs twirl and laugh. You wake up in a sweat, with vague notions that faking your own death is the answer. You’ve heard Mexico is beautiful this time of year.

Still, you’ve got nothing.

But what if you didn’t need a clever angle at all? What if there was a secret technique that could cover for your complete lack of scholarly inspiration? No, I’m not suggesting you go to one of those paper mills, you cheat. You wanna get expelled? I’m talking about the power of suggestion.

Perhaps the sheer look of your dissertation could subtly influence professors to give you a sweet mark. There they are, grading dozens of essays written in a Times New Roman, 12 pt. font, on white paper. More like Times Old Roman! And then there’s your paper, written in a rockin’ 30 pt. Impact font, all caps, with a ghostly watermark in the image of you giving a thumbs-up underneath. Your ideas are so loud, they don’t have to be good!

Or so my logic goes. I can’t tell if this is a brilliant scheme, or the desperate ramblings of a madman. You see, I’ve been banging my head against the wall trying to come up with a decent thesis, and now I’m not thinking clearly. I might have a concussion. One thing’s for sure: I can’t risk handing a terrible essay into my prof, written in the delightfully equestrian-themed font Giddyup, in the hopes she’ll “pony up” a passing mark. What if it doesn’t work?!

So I decide to do a little fieldwork. I enlist my former professor Nick Mount, who teaches a course on Contemporary Literary Criticism, to compare notes with me on what more eccentric fonts might suggest to a teacher. I provide him with a few examples

Joe: Student is a fun-loving dude who’s just too darn likable to fail!

Prof. Mount: I must have fallen asleep and woken up at Ryerson.

Joe: Student is a tormented, Lovecraftian genius. You may fail him, but history will vindicate him years after he dies in obscurity. Overly critical markers should beware the threat of hauntings and/or the wrath of Cthulhu.

Prof. Mount: Halloween’s over, kid. Your essay makes my eyes hurt, and for that, you will pay.

Joe: Student wrote 30 inches of copy, and none of it purple prose. Just the facts, ma’am!

Prof. Mount: Advanced student. They usually don’t figure out that nothing fills a page faster than Courier till grad school.

Joe: Student hand wrote essay, likely by candlelight with a quill pen. He makes up for his franticism with romanticism. Paper belongs to a simpler era, when gentlemen doffed their hats and rode penny-farthings.

Prof. Mount: Very antique style. Apparently Arts & Science is now recruiting in cemeteries.

Joe: Student has surely hidden some powerful, eldritch meaning in this paper, as though it were the most cryptic of Borges’ short stories. Uncovering it would be a painstaking anthropological process, and the busy prof would be best suited giving it an A and calling it a day.

Prof. Mount: Either an ESL student or a genius, maybe both. Either way, it’s happy hour at the Faculty Club: B+.

Well, there you have it. Looks like I should probably abandon my theory, and give the library one more shot. Or hand in six pages of inscrutable hieroglyphics. Either way.