My department holds an annual cleaning project, always carried out by penultimate students in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the course International Communication.

To cut the long story short and go straight to the point, my friend (the content creator) and I (the creative team lead for the project) went to the faculty to get some things done: get the list of lecturers and staff in my department, check the available cleaning supplies so we’d know what to budget for the January cleaning, and also create awareness content for the upcoming project.

Now, here’s the tea 😹

We needed some of our coursemates to appear in the content. We found a few of them in the lecture rooms, and some broadcast majors who had just finished an event. We asked them to join in.

First question:

“Will there be a grade?” 😹

My friend said yes.

They agreed immediately.

The funny part? There was no grade. The lecturer didn’t send us. 😹

When another set of people joined and asked the same question, I answered honestly.

"No". 😹😭

They dropped the cleaning equipment and were already preparing to leave when my friend quickly said they’d be awarded marks. Those who had been tricked earlier confidently backed her up. 😹

And just like that, balance was restored.

We shot the content and honestly, you needed to be there to see how they queued up to write their names and matric numbers.😹 People were not about to feature in content meant for a project we were required to do unless there was some grade reward attached to it. 😹😭😭

Any grade they eventually get, they’ll probably think it was the mysterious 3–5 marks the lecturer added that carried them.

What struck me most was not that people wanted marks (I mean, which student doesn't?), it was that the idea of marks was enough to mobilise them. No official instruction. No lecturer. Just perceived reward.

In the end, no marks were given, no lecturer sent us and no record was taken.

Yet people showed up, queued up and signed up, motivated by a grade that never existed.

Maybe deception is not  the key to getting people to act but perception certainly is. And sometimes, the strongest motivator is not value, duty or community… it is the belief that someone, somewhere, is keeping score.