ode to grading midterms...

students baffle me.

the exam that the prof i TA for gave on monday was 8 problems. 6 were direct quotes from homework we had discussed in depth in recitation. they were told repeatedly that the exam would look just like homework. they had a formula sheet a week in advance to know exactly what formulas they'd have and what they had to memorize. it was not meant to be a stressful ordeal.

even with formula sheet and having seen *every* problem done before, about 1/3 of the students have done well on the first two problems i've graded (i need to grade more tonight). the problem i'm grading next was a computation with a formula exactly on the formula sheet... no sweat, right? even writing the formula down as the first thing on their papers, i found about 3 right answers in the first 30 i've glanced over... and 2 more that made a small arithmetic error on the way... not a clue what the other 24 students tried to do.

frankly, i'm confused.

... and sad. it's easy to grade right papers, and hard to fairly divide up partial credit. i *want* them to do well, but i can't give them good grades for telling lies, especially when they have the formulas right in front of them.

oi....

the end.