If You Don't Know, Fake It

Here's a hilarious, apparently true, story of a 23 year old engineering student who shares the same name as a NYU international economics professor and was mistakenly asked to give a series of lectures in Beijing on global economics. The student knew nothing about the subject but decided to go anyway. He got a book on the subject and read it on the flight over to China and created a basic presentation of the material. He figured that he would be giving the same lecture to different people over three days, so he'd be okay if he found enough material to present to what he assumed were introductory students.

However, once he arrived in China he learned that he would be lecturing to the same group of students over the three days and that the students were MBA grads from the world of business who were getting PhDs in the subject. But the lad decided to give it the ol' college try anyway, by ripping the pages out of the book he had studied on the flight and presenting the material as if it were his own notes.

It went smoothly for the first two days and he got compliments by the students for his presentation and about how much they were learning. (No one ever appeared to realize that he was not the expected world-renowned professor.) Unfortunately, by the end of day two, he was on chapter 15 of 16 of the book he brought, and he knew there was no way he could make it through day 3. So he took off, went into hiding for a day and then caught his pre-scheduled flight home, no worse for the wear.
- posted by Joshua @ 4:30 PM