The Septimus Notes

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Trials and tribulA+ions: I was saying to our Lady Tramp the other day that the problem with receiving an A-/A on an exam is the trouble of wondering what little thing prevented the grade from being a solid A, and what slightly less little thing prevented it from being an A+.

And so I met with my really cute and super cool (although a little too Williamsburg for my tastes) TA to discuss my exam. Not to change my grade, I'm not one of those. Only to find out what went wrong (since clearly it wasn't much that did) for the future. Apparently nothing. Two factors more or less external to myself (Durkheim would be proud) led to my simply achieving near-Excellence.

The first: I didn't use the "key terms" that the Professor wanted us to employ. My TA personally disagrees with the Prof.'s aim -- the point of requiring key terms is to ensure that students understood the work. Although key terms really only shows that kids were able to read her handwriting on the blackboard. My TA said over and over again that in each answer I clearly showed, explained, and developed each sociologist's primary claim. Whatever, no big.

The second: My TA says to me, "Hey, do you know, do they give A+'s here? At Chicago we didn't have any and I know [the other TA] didn't give any, but we heard some kids talking about getting A+'s in other classes?" I had just asked Kate this very same question last night. I don't know if Professors give A+'s for grades. I do know that Columbia allows the A+ in one's GPA (4.333). So then there's the question: If teachers only ever give out A's as what they think is the highest on homeworks/papers/exams, then what determines getting an A+?

So, in short, I wrote an A+ exam that was bumped down to an A-/A because I did not parrot the teacher and because my TA didn't know that A+'s exist here.

What's the opposite of a free fall?

promulgated by SWS2.1 at 17:39.
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