By Eric Koeppel —

​Students in an online ethics course were shocked recently when they discovered that one of their classmates did what no student in their right mind would ever even think about attempting: going above the weekly discussion board posting requirement. ​

Dave Plinko, a junior at University of Wisconsin–Stout, made not one, not two, but three more discussion board posts than he really needed to on the night of Nov. 4. On a discussion board that is normally filled with students blindly quoting large chunks of information from the textbook and effortlessly posting sentence-long replies that are sometimes as short as “I agree,” this was, indeed, quite unorthodox.

“I mean, I know the professor said that he hopes this discussion board will become a platform for healthy debates and that it’s okay to post more than required, but I just kind of assumed that he was joking,” said classmate Kelly Bernstein.

“Yeah, of course I was joking,” confirmed Dr. Sam Parker, the professor for the ethics course. “I have been teaching this class for six years now and can say with total confidence that nobody has ever put even half the amount of effort into discussion board postings as this guy. I don’t even know what to do about it. Should I award him for going above and beyond? Or dock him points for trying too hard?”

Since it is an online course, no one knows exactly who this Dave Plinko character is, but one thing is certain:

“The guy’s a total showoff,” said Pam Turtle, another of Plinko’s dumbfounded classmates. “Look, I know we were starting to get into this heated intellectual debate on the subject of euthanasia and people were providing a lot of valuable input, but everyone besides this Dave guy stopped once they reached the weekly posting quota. It’s almost as if he actually cares about the subject matter. Who is this maniac?”

Since the incident, many of Plinko’s classmates have been tirelessly analyzing his social media profiles to find out exactly what would drive someone to do such an unusual thing. However, the only significant piece of information that has been discovered thus far is the fact that “Good Will Hunting” is listed as one of his favorite movies.

“Matt Damon’s character wasn’t even a student, yet he did complicated math problems anyway,” explained Bernstein. “There has to be some connection there, right?”

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