The Relatively Short Questionnaire (Relative to the SATs)

 This past week I was lucky enough to get to hang with a bunch of my college friends. I almost said “old college friends” but we are not old, nor do we want to be referred to that way. I know a lot of people lose touch after college so I was super glad to get a chance to see them. We ate a lot (something we’ve always enjoyed doing together), had a True Blood Fest, and reminisced. It was while reminiscing that the Relatively Short Questionnaire was brought up.

Honestly, I had forgotten about it. Of course I seem to forget most of our college hijinks, despite the fact that 9 times out of 10 I’m the one blamed (responsible) for them. Originally it was just me and my friend Jenn in the car remembering it fondly. And by that, I mean laughing hysterically while trying not to drive off the road. We then had to share it with everyone else, because it’s just that good.

The Relatively Short Questionnaire started as an effort to help out some of our housemates. A few of them had some man trouble. They picked awful people to start relationships with, and then were shocked when they failed. While consoling them, we started saying that maybe we should get to help them decide whether or not a boy was worth dating.

I don’t think anyone expected me to retire to my room for the night, and the next day proudly start promoting the Relatively Short Questionnaire as the solution. I’m fairly sure I actually wrote all of it myself. Which is scary. If you read through the questions, you might start questioning my mental state. But there was a point to it! The idea was to get some basic important information, and at the same time, see how the man would respond to the fact that it’s long, politically incorrect, and completely random.

Because of course when you first meet a guy they’re on their best behavior (which I just spelled the British way before autocorrect yelled at me… weird. I’ve been reading too much Wuthering Heights). To know if they’re actually a good guy for the long term, you need to really push them past their comfort zone. Thus the beauty of the Relatively Short Questionnaire!

Now technically, the name of the quiz is Important Questionnaire Which Ascertains the Honorability of the Man Creature.  We started calling it the Relatively Short Questionnaire as it’s easier to say. Plus, it ties in with the basic call & response when you give a man the questionnaire. You say “don’t you want to take this quiz? It’s relatively short?” They grunt and nod, and then after getting a third of the way start swearing about how it’s not short at all. That’s when you say “It IS relatively short! Relative to the SATs!”

After creating the Relatively Short Questionnaire, we figured out how it would work. Men would take it, and we would grade their answers on a point scale, and then calculate the total number of points and create an average or some such thing. I’m fuzzy on those details. Jenn was the math major, and the one responsible for that aspect.

Of course a score wouldn’t do us any good without something to compare it to, so we rounded up some friends/boyfriends/brothers/acquaintances to take the new questionnaire.

Most of the guys that took it were some how familiar and tied to at least one of us housemates, so it’s not a huge surprise we could make them take it. But at one point our housemate Ann found some guy she knew from class outside playing basketball, and she talked him into taking it too. I don’t even remember his name. It wasn’t like they were actually even friends! But this is how dedicated we were to the questionnaire. We needed a large response set.

Sadly, we don’t still have the majority of these responses. We printed the quiz out on paper and never scanned the answers. They must have been tossed when we moved out.

Also sadly, the idea of the questionnaire never exactly played out. See, the thing was, as much as we liked reading the responses, we never wanted to sit down and grade one all the way through.

The other issue was that the grades were subjective. We gave points on a 5 point scale I believe. Each housemate gave a grade for each question. But past that, it was totally up to them what they wanted to do. For instance, there’s a question about Tom Brady on the questionnaire. I hate Tom Brady. So any kind of favorable Tom Brady mention got 0 or 1 points from me automatically. However, no one else hated Tom Brady. So they scored on things like loquaciousness, spelling, etc. Same thing with the question about sticking gum under the table. Big deal to me and Jenn, not an issue for anyone else.

Sometimes we got into arguments. Especially if we were grading somebody we wanted to have a decent score, and then someone gave a low grade for something stupid. Sometimes we debated over the interpretation of an answer, as that could change the score. All in all it became very time consuming, and although we faithfully read all of the answers, I don’t think we ever fully graded a single questionnaire.

The thing is, talking with my friends about the Relatively Short Questionnaire raised a point that was really hammered home when I came back and found it on my computer. Because, Honest And True Time, I am apparently a douchebag.

Yes, friends, it’s true. I knew that in college we did some pretty jerkface stuff, but I always assumed it was just want happened when we were all together. Now I’m starting to suspect it’s really my influence. I mean it’s funny to reminiscence, it’s funny to reread the Relatively Short Questionnaire, but really? I wrote that??

I feel like I need a douchebag jar just like Schmidt on New Girl. No wonder he’s my favorite character.

In closing, I’ll leave you with the link to the Relatively Short Questionnaire in case you want to check it out. I warn you though, the faint of heart need not click. Additionally, I’m also linking you to one of our favorite answer sets, the responses of housemate Jenna’s boyfriend, who we’ll call Fitzwilliam. I have removed his name & birthdate, but it otherwise is unchanged. Keep in mind, Fitzwilliam liked to believe he was evil, badass, and violent. 

Meanwhile despite my Honest And True Time realization, I feel compelled to have all new people take the Relatively Short Questionnaire, so I might start bugging all my males friends.