A math exam
The other day I had an exam. It’s almost half of January, technically middle of winter, yet the temperature was around 10˚C in the morning. My one-hour walk to school was nice and helped me to relax before the exam. After seeing the test I was even happier, most of it was real easy. So I concentrated on the easy parts, and seeing that I already have more than 75 points (out of 100) and being sure that it’s completely correct, I decided not to try to write anything to the remaining two tasks (I prefer to write nothing than crap, I think it just looks better).
After getting out, I discussed the test with other students and one girl said that the prefessor doesn’t really care about most of the tasks and doesn’t really count the points… That the only important thing is that you get the derivative right. Crap… Shit… Why does this always happen to me? Why didn’t I know it earlier? Why did I decide to skip differentiations when learning for the exam?
Endless waiting in a corridor. The percentage of oxygen ten times less than usual. Fainting every while. Students disappearing from the row, and then coming out of the room either very happy or angry or just plain resigned. Finally, my turn… I find my papers and present them to the professor: “Hmmm, where’s the derivative?”, “umm, well, somehow, you know…”, “without the derivation I can’t let you pass… why didn’t you do the derivative…?” think, think, think, what can I tell him? Silence. “Ok, you’ll get another function to differentiate, last chance”. Crap.
Luckily, the one I got was rather easy, so I managed to do it and passed, but… it was close…
If I failed I would have to spend another whole day there (not to talk about also having to learn derivations), thank god…
6 thoughts on “A math exam”
lobo 2007-01-15
lol, why did you skip those questions?? :) there is always a chance you’ll get at least 1 point here and there, the way you do it luck isn’t even a factor. this time you got away with it but lady luck might not be so easy on you next time for pulling a stunt like this :D
Merlijn 2007-01-15
Derivatives– I also hate them. Still I think’it’s good practise to always write something in questions. Sometimes you even get points for stuff like this
Derivate function (no clue how to do this) Solve derivative = 0 Plug answers in formula g(x) And we have the answer.
Somtimes you can even get up to 50% scores >_
teacher 2007-01-16
I would like to have students like Vitek … when I was teaching in France, I had to correct about 50 tests of 6-8 pages each, written by hand in a language wich is not my mother language. Many of the students tried Merlijn tactics, filling pages by random equations not connected with the problem … terrible. Some even protested and asked points for that mess, arguing that they wrote so many correct equations! You are my hero, V. (But derivative is so easy …)
Drc 2007-01-17
Docela dobra taktika je strhavat body za odpovedi, ktere jsou sice spravne, ale ne jinou otazku…
Merlijn 2007-01-18
I’d like to point out that my idea was not to write random crap but everything relevant to the problem. Go and complain to some exam board for awarding pupils points for not it or learn a language properly :rolleyes: ;)
tasuki 2007-01-20
w00t… a discussion? here? impossible…
“Go and complain to some exam board for awarding pupils points for not it or learn a language properly”
WTF? The meaning of this sentence eludes me completely…
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