How can someone study and still make a 35 on a multiple choice exam? It baffles me, it really does. You don't even have to really know the answer to most of the questions, just be able to RECOGNIZE them, for Pete's sake! :faint:

Some folks just can't take tests. They get nervous, stressed, and they do stupid things.

Of course, most of the time it is a hangover, no sleep, or no studying.

How can someone study and still make a 35 on a multiple choice exam? It baffles me, it really does. You don't even have to really know the answer to most of the questions, just be able to RECOGNIZE them, for Pete's sake! :faint:

SCARY!

Some folks just can't take tests. They get nervous, stressed, and they do stupid things.

Of course, most of the time it is a hangover, no sleep, or no studying.

Yep. One girl skipped an entire page of questions accidentally. She made a 47, by the way, which will probably not endear me to her mother, who happens to be the secretary at the college (an extended campus of my university) that I have to be on good terms with if I want my day to go smoothly.

Oh yeah, I remember the politics of staff members and family. Never again... I never want to teach again.

It's not your fault she skipped a page of questions. Is she typically a good student? Does she usually do well?

Oh yeah, I remember the politics of staff members and family. Never again... I never want to teach again.

It's not your fault she skipped a page of questions. Is she typically a good student? Does she usually do well?

Well, she's on a scholarship, so hopefully that means that she'll do better. She managed to inform me, though, that she has to make a B in my class in order to keep her scholarship. Hint, hint, you know.

Well, she's on a scholarship, so hopefully that means that she'll do better. She managed to inform me, though, that she has to make a B in my class in order to keep her scholarship. Hint, hint, you know.

So did you take the hint? HAHAHA!!!

So did you take the hint? HAHAHA!!!

I never did respond well to people trying to tell me to do something. It tends to make me want to do the opposite. I figure, if she wants a B in the class, she better do B work.

It's past 1 AM, and I should be in bed. I have to give them their midterm tomorrow and I need to get there early to make copies and set up the exam. It's an hour-long drive, and I need to be there at 8 (at the very latest), so I should be getting up at 6:15, I guess. That gives me 45 minutes to shower, dress, and make a run by Starbucks on the way out of town. But I'm not sleepy, damn it!

Oh gosh, I know the frustrations.

Try doing a group assignment with a bunch of 20 year olds when you're 40. Sheesh. I do actually care about my results. These people, honestly. No reference to the criteria sheet, no regard for what the assignment was asking us to do, no ability to reason, analyse and hypothesise from data. Basic kids schoolwork was all they were capable of.

We got a Pass. I was disgusted. Officially my worse assignment result ever. But unless I want to play the boring mature age student and come over all bossy.

Its quite possible to do badly whilst still having turned up and attempted to study, if you dont basically give a toss about it anyway.

lauraend--I teach in a college also, and I hear you loud and clear. I keep reminding myself that students earn their grades--I don't give them. Yesterday I had a student e-mail me and complain that since her answer of 6-10 million was close to the correct range for RBC count, I should give her credit--at least she didn't choose an answer that was "way out there." (We had even talked about Polycythemia Vera in class!)

Okay, so for the midterm today, I had the exam set up like any other lab practical. Anyone here who's taken a biology class should be familiar with the format, where you move around the lab and have a bunch of stations with different questions set up. How fucking hard is it for people to grasp the direction of "when time is called, follow the arrow on your current set of questions to the next set?" Every time I give a lab exam, I have people who apparently don't know that an arrow pointing to the right means that you need to move to the freaking right! Every. Single. Time.

lauraend--I teach in a college also, and I hear you loud and clear. I keep reminding myself that students earn their grades--I don't give them. Yesterday I had a student e-mail me and complain that since her answer of 6-10 million was close to the correct range for RBC count, I should give her credit--at least she didn't choose an answer that was "way out there." (We had even talked about Polycythemia Vera in class!)

The sense of entitlement that certain students seem to have is outrageous. Some of them seem to think that because they are paying to take a class, they should get a guaranteed A. I've had people come up to me at the end of the semester and beg me for extra credit. Of course, they're always the people that NEVER took advantage of the extra credit assignments that I offered during the semester. I always tell them, "Sorry, I offered you extra credit, but you never did it. It's too late to worry about your grade now; you should have thought about it earlier in the semester."

I just took an exam today, made a 30..

I'm smart.. and I studied.. but my problem seems to be (from what I notice in my pattern), if I don't get some sort of 'review' on what the test is going to be over--- I will do bad.. not because I didn't do the work, or didn't study.. but I seem to study the WRONG things. For example.. today I made a 30 on Chapter 4. Chapter 4 is 38 text book pages long, with excerpts from a lot of philosophy readings. I read it all to begin with. Then I went back and highlighted things, *I* think will be on the test. When I get the test, I'm wrong. It's things I wouldn't even think would have been on the test. And at that point, I'm just screwed.

I always get mad at teachers that aren't consistent on what they test on, or give no inkling as to what the test will actually be. I can't absorb every quote for each chapter, so..

That's my rant. Glad I'm done after this semester. No more degrees for me, this is for the BIRDS.

I just took an exam today, made a 30..

I'm smart.. and I studied.. but my problem seems to be (from what I notice in my pattern), if I don't get some sort of 'review' on what the test is going to be over--- I will do bad.. not because I didn't do the work, or didn't study.. but I seem to study the WRONG things. For example.. today I made a 30 on Chapter 4. Chapter 4 is 38 text book pages long, with excerpts from a lot of philosophy readings. I read it all to begin with. Then I went back and highlighted things, *I* think will be on the test. When I get the test, I'm wrong. It's things I wouldn't even think would have been on the test. And at that point, I'm just screwed.

I always get mad at teachers that aren't consistent on what they test on, or give no inkling as to what the test will actually be. I can't absorb every quote for each chapter, so..

That's my rant. Glad I'm done after this semester. No more degrees for me, this is for the BIRDS.

I'll probably give a review for the next test, just to help people with that problem. I usually give tests with emphasis placed on the major ideas and concepts in the chapters. I try not to bother too much with the picky little things. Some of it's hard to show them, though, so it just comes down to their ability to memorize. I mean, it's hard for some people to understand things that they can't see with their naked eye or touch with their fingers. I've told them, though, that if I lecture on it, it's completely fair game. I don't test them on the things that I don't go over, but they are responsible for knowing the stuff that's in my PowerPoint presentations.

Well, that's reasonable. This is a distance learning class with the University in New Mexico I attended (I was a semester shy of a degree, so taking distance learning with them to get that degree).

There's no presentations, no lectures. Read Chapter X and here's the quiz. No inkling as to what the test will be over.

And I've had real classes like this too, where you just read.

HOWEVER.. power point presentations are wonderful. My first sociology class, the teacher did every class with a PP, and I just copied everything on it. The test was right off of that. Simple enough, and that's what I like!