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Given the vitriol directed towards managers who show all the consistency of a kite in a hurricane, I know that what I did here is not appreciated. However, I must confess that I am now guilty of giving EWs what they want, just to make them go away.
I'm currently TAing a course, and I'm in charge of marking the lab. Now, I asked the prof if he wanted this marked along the lines of "they did something related to what we asked for, they get the mark" (i.e. it raises the class average) or along the lines of "nope, different in the third decimal place, no mark for you" (i.e. it screws the class over). He didn't care, so I marked it fairly easily, the average on the lab was higher than on the midterm. This has not, in the least, stopped people from coming to me and complaining.
Here's a few hints for the EW undergrads (this may be useful for anyone else, but you probably already know most of these):
If I can't tell it's in your lab, you don't get credit for it being there. If I spend half an hour reading your 8 page lab and still can't find it, you lose marks for it being hard to find rather than for it not being there.
Yes, this holds true for when you put references that I told you to put in at the end of the last appendix. (And how come you can be in third year, and still do something stupid like trying to have shared references for your main report and appendices?)
If you come and get upset with me about something, please have some idea what you're trying to accomplish. I did everything except come out and say "I guarantee you won't lose marks this time if you leave your lab for re-marking", and you still insisted that you couldn't give it to me to re-mark because you'd lose marks. (The fact that you know this happens tells me that you're a jerk in your other courses, because no one knows that this happens unless they've had it done to them).
Related to the above, please don't get upset with me and then claim that you understand that there's nothing I can do. I take people literally you know (there's no way I'm your first Aspie, not in engineering). If you say that you understand it's not my fault, my next question will be why you're continuing to yell at me. And you're right, you weren't actually yelling. However, by your logic neither was I, so trying to say that "you're yelling, not me" doesn't work.
Trying to claim that "we got 80's and 90's in all our other labs" doesn't do a thing. Even if you did (which I doubt, unless you just managed to get a really good one from last year to copy), that is relevant to my course how? My response is "Good, you don't have to worry about failing the term even if you do poorly in this course"
Trying to say that you need a high mark in the lab because you were counting on it to pull up your midterm mark is equally ineffective. You just explained to me that either a) you didn't work any problem sets, so deserved the bad mark as a lesson or b) you don't get the concepts (it's an OPEN BOOK exam), so passing you would be very bad. Please don't design a boiler for me until you have a better idea of the concepts involved.
Finally, if you are that desperate for 1 or 2 marks, you're probably a lost cause already. Consider this course a write-off, and study for your others. And leave me alone! (I understand that sometimes it's the principle of the thing, but you should have learned by now that shit happens, and we have no way of telling you apart from the EWs).
Thank you, I feel a lot better now. Even though they're EW's, and my prof is great about standing behind me (I have a sign threatening to feed people to the geese, he laughed when he read it), I can't get away with ranting to these people, because I'd probably freak out.
I'm currently TAing a course, and I'm in charge of marking the lab. Now, I asked the prof if he wanted this marked along the lines of "they did something related to what we asked for, they get the mark" (i.e. it raises the class average) or along the lines of "nope, different in the third decimal place, no mark for you" (i.e. it screws the class over). He didn't care, so I marked it fairly easily, the average on the lab was higher than on the midterm. This has not, in the least, stopped people from coming to me and complaining.
Here's a few hints for the EW undergrads (this may be useful for anyone else, but you probably already know most of these):
If I can't tell it's in your lab, you don't get credit for it being there. If I spend half an hour reading your 8 page lab and still can't find it, you lose marks for it being hard to find rather than for it not being there.
Yes, this holds true for when you put references that I told you to put in at the end of the last appendix. (And how come you can be in third year, and still do something stupid like trying to have shared references for your main report and appendices?)
If you come and get upset with me about something, please have some idea what you're trying to accomplish. I did everything except come out and say "I guarantee you won't lose marks this time if you leave your lab for re-marking", and you still insisted that you couldn't give it to me to re-mark because you'd lose marks. (The fact that you know this happens tells me that you're a jerk in your other courses, because no one knows that this happens unless they've had it done to them).
Related to the above, please don't get upset with me and then claim that you understand that there's nothing I can do. I take people literally you know (there's no way I'm your first Aspie, not in engineering). If you say that you understand it's not my fault, my next question will be why you're continuing to yell at me. And you're right, you weren't actually yelling. However, by your logic neither was I, so trying to say that "you're yelling, not me" doesn't work.
Trying to claim that "we got 80's and 90's in all our other labs" doesn't do a thing. Even if you did (which I doubt, unless you just managed to get a really good one from last year to copy), that is relevant to my course how? My response is "Good, you don't have to worry about failing the term even if you do poorly in this course"
Trying to say that you need a high mark in the lab because you were counting on it to pull up your midterm mark is equally ineffective. You just explained to me that either a) you didn't work any problem sets, so deserved the bad mark as a lesson or b) you don't get the concepts (it's an OPEN BOOK exam), so passing you would be very bad. Please don't design a boiler for me until you have a better idea of the concepts involved.
Finally, if you are that desperate for 1 or 2 marks, you're probably a lost cause already. Consider this course a write-off, and study for your others. And leave me alone! (I understand that sometimes it's the principle of the thing, but you should have learned by now that shit happens, and we have no way of telling you apart from the EWs).
Thank you, I feel a lot better now. Even though they're EW's, and my prof is great about standing behind me (I have a sign threatening to feed people to the geese, he laughed when he read it), I can't get away with ranting to these people, because I'd probably freak out.
*duck*
. And thank you for making that apology, I never got around to doing one of those myself - I had to get flat out told by my grade 6 teacher that I wasn't allowed to come up and ask for more marks if I got over 90. It stuck (see OP where I mention Asperger's) well enough that I almost didn't go and claim marks from an addition error once (I had aced the exam, no lost marks anywhere, and some marks disappeared between the questions being marked, and the total being added up.)
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