A college student whose tweeted email exchange with his professor went viral was in for a surprise when the professor turned his 15 minutes of Internet fame into a teaching moment.
After Twitter user Kade Walker shared his South Dakota State University professor’s casual response to a question about his political science final exam, the joking tweet quickly made the online rounds, garnering nearly 185,000 likes and 50,000 retweets since it was posted on Dec. 7.
“Is it still okay for me to take my final tomorrow at 12?” Walker had written in an email, prompting the one-word reply, “Whatever.”
“High school: College is no joke, your instructors are very serious and you have to always be proffesional and respectful. College…” Walker captioned a screenshot of the exchange.
However, Walker’s professor, Dr. Dave Wiltse, wasn’t about to let his student get away with his glaring academic mistake. “[The feeling when] your words go viral, and your punk student doesn’t cite his source,” he tweeted in response.
See the exchange below.
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Write to Megan McCluskey at megan.mccluskey@time.com