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It's not just that it's embedded in some of the university boilerplate that the students probably have on all their syllabuses, it's that it doesn't read like anything, certainly not a promise of a free $50.

Is it a typo? A copy-paste error? Only knowing that "free to the first who claims" is part of a boomer gotcha for kids these days does that whole parenthetical make any sense to me.

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Also, if I read that, I would assume that figuring out where I needed to go and actually taking time to do that would end up in nothing, so I wouldn't bother. I wouldn't expect to get rich off it, and the chance at (apparently) $50 wouldn't excite me enough for me to waste my time on it.

When i was in college, a chance at say 50$ would totally tempt me to spend a few hours hunting around campus ( Arizona State Uni for me ), i made ~$8 an hour at the time

Sure, it could be a fun thing to do (I'd have done a little treasure hunt for $50, too), but the professor's syllabus doesn't say it's $50 at all. "Free to the first who claims" -- claims what? free what? It isn't even a complete sentence, in the middle of boilerplate that's if anything exceedingly verbose. It doesn't parse like meaningful instructions. That's why I think it's a hokey gotcha, and not an actual sign of "people don't read instructions" (which we all instinctively know anyway??)

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