Academic

At Maryland, each student taking an exam receives a number in numerical order that is used to identify her exam.  My first year of teaching I spent several hours frantically looking for Exam #13, which I believed had been misplaced, only to learn that number 13 was not assigned to students taking exams.  I am not sure about the official rationale behind such a policy, but I would guess that it was designed to alleviate student stress about potential bad luck.  Indeed, in addition to all the other things one must worry about while taking an exam, at least one need not be concerned about the potential implications of being assigned the unlucky number 13.  Hence, I was surprised to see number 13 appear this year in my stack of exams.  Again, I am not sure if there is an official policy reason behind its appearance, and I have not heard any student discussion of the issue.  But I could not help but wonder if someone had decided that it was no longer important to pay heed to students' potential superstitions.  Indeed, it is likely that most students pay little, if any, attention to the number they are assigned.  But that of course begs the question about why the number was removed in the first instance.  At any rate, the good (and lucky?) news is that I have finished grading my exams--including Exam #13.