Drake Law Faculty Bumbles Writing Exams, Will Students Suffer?

[This is wrong.]

"No one is saying "screw you."

While I'm sure you'd be more polite, you'd be effectively dinging their GPAs for something they had nothing to do with.  I'd much prefer to be insulted than to have that happen to me.

This is wrong.

[ISUCKATTHIS]

But I can't stand all this "personal responsibility" moralizing.  It's one thing to say - "look, I understand and sympathize, but this particular administrative screw up shouldn't have caused you much harm" and quite another to say "grow up! you're in law school!  you are responsible for checking the format of your exam and, if there is any error, it is your personal responsibility to detect and fix it in the time frame provided.  i would have.  I always do this without fail."  I think that's totally unreasonable and I seriously doubt (perhaps unfairly) that any one holding the OP to that standard would hold him/herself to it in the same or similar situation.

Really?  Really?

Jesus Christ, you suck at this.

It's not that people don't feel bad for the OP, but it seriously was not that big of a deal.  I missed a whole page on an exam once because, for some reason, the professor decided to print it on the reverse side of the third (out of four) pages without warning and without notice of how many questions there were.

Was I pissed?  Yes. 

Was it my fault for not checking the exam thoroughly, particularly since I've been prompted to do so before every exam I've ever taken?  Yes.

Did I talk to the professor to see what could be done?  Yes.

Did it help?  No.

Did I sack up and live with it?  Yes.

It's a terrible predicament, but penalizing the majority for this oversight is ridiculous. 

[/what every other smart person in this thread has been saying]




I get the sense that you're just clinging to your argument because you started it.  You should know that this is not clever. 

You were totally at fault and not put at a disadvantage with respect to any other student.  This a completely different situation.  Think about it, you'll figure it out eventually.  If not, I can't help you.

[This is wrong.]

But I can't stand all this "personal responsibility" moralizing.  It's one thing to say - "look, I understand and sympathize, but this particular administrative screw up shouldn't have caused you much harm" and quite another to say "grow up! you're in law school!  you are responsible for checking the format of your exam and, if there is any error, it is your personal responsibility to detect and fix it in the time frame provided.  i would have.  I always do this without fail."  I think that's totally unreasonable and I seriously doubt (perhaps unfairly) that any one holding the OP to that standard would hold him/herself to it in the same or similar situation.

Really?  Really?

Jesus Christ, you suck at this.

It's not that people don't feel bad for the OP, but it seriously was not that big of a deal.  I missed a whole page on an exam once because, for some reason, the professor decided to print it on the reverse side of the third (out of four) pages without warning and without notice of how many questions there were.

Was I pissed?  Yes. 

Was it my fault for not checking the exam thoroughly, particularly since I've been prompted to do so before every exam I've ever taken?  Yes.

Did I talk to the professor to see what could be done?  Yes.

Did it help?  No.

Did I sack up and live with it?  Yes.

It's a terrible predicament, but penalizing the majority for this oversight is ridiculous. 

[/what every other smart person in this thread has been saying]




I get the sense that you're just clinging to your argument because you started it.  You should know that this is not clever. 

You were totally at fault and not put at a disadvantage with respect to any other student.  This a completely different situation.  Think about it, you'll figure it out eventually.  If not, I can't help you.

::smh::

1.  This is an assumption you're drawing from... what?  You don't know the full story.  ::diagnoses weaknesses::
2.  Even if you're right, so what?  It's directly relevant.  Think about it.  You'll figure it out eventually.  If not, I can help you, but I really don't f-ing want to.

[ISUCKATTHIS]

I'm not assuming anything.  I just read what you told me.  Keep thinking about it.  If that gives you a headache, take advil.  Don't give up, you'll get there.

Good luck.

[This is wrong.]

I'm not assuming anything.  I just read what you told me.  Keep thinking about it.  If that gives you a headache, take advil.  Don't give up, you'll get there.

Good luck.

lulz

(Pssst!  You may want to address point 2!)

[ISUCKATTHIS]

2:  it's not relevant because the oversight was yours.

[Miss P]

"No one is saying "screw you."

While I'm sure you'd be more polite, you'd be effectively dinging their GPAs for something they had nothing to do with.  I'd much prefer to be insulted than to have that happen to me.

No, it's not dinging her GPA for something for which she had no responsibility or opportunity to fix.  Students misallocate their time on exams all the time, for idiosyncratic reasons.  If there's an external factor, obviously the professor should make an effort to take that into account.  I just think you and the OP are making a mountain out of a molehill with respect to this particular factor.  There wasn't a broken clock in the room or an irresponsible proctor.  There weren't missing pages.  There weren't several pages of gibberish (as I have had in an exam).  There wasn't a problem with uploading or downloading the exam.  There were merely some additional instruction pages.  Bummer?  Yes.  Insurmountable hurdle?  No.

The OP had the same opportunity as all students to look through the exam before taking the test and neglected to do it.  She was adversely affected only in relation to other students who did not take this step but who were not thrown off by the pagination, whether because they didn't make the same bizarre assumption she did (that a copy of the instruction sheet in the middle of the exam meant the exam was over) or because their exams were paginated correctly.  This is unfair, but it is small beans.  

[ToTransferOrNot]

You can't demonstrate that more people would be thrown off by incorrect formatting (an extra copied page) than by inconsistent formatting (a random double-sided page.) How in God's name can you not see the similarity there?

The action that the students should have taken to avoid a problem is the same in both cases.

You sound like a broken record- "they should have copied the exam correctly!" Well no kidding! Shoulda, coulda, woulda. Hopefully this debacle will improve Drake's test administration in the future. That doesn't justify punishing the students who weren't affected.

And again, how the hell do you justify penalizing students who had correctly formatted exams, or the ones who had incorrectly formatted exams who noticed and dealt with the error? You dismiss the solution of "do nothing- the breadth and depth of the consequences will be more fair than any of your solutions save #1" on its face. Your solutions, aside from #1, are not merely "imperfect," they're absurd. I mean, really... ignore the final two questions? The "do nothing" approach is "imperfect."

Edit: Probably not the case, but it is really hard to get over the impression that ISUCKATTHIS has made a mistake similar to OP's, and is hurt by the fact that the majority of people think the idea of it being some kind of manifest injustice is absurd.

[Miss P]

2:  it's not relevant because the oversight was yours.

Dude, the oversight here was the OP's, too.  Your argument is that there should be a remedy for the OP even though this  external factor -- the bad pagination -- affected the OP in a way that it likely did not affect other similarly situated students.  The OP's response to seeing the extra pages was obviously strange -- however understandable it might be if we take into account the pressure of exam time -- and she made a mistake.  You have to at least admit this.

[ToTransferOrNot]

2:  it's not relevant because the oversight was yours.

Dude, the oversight here was the OP's, too.  Your argument is that there should be a remedy for the OP even though this  external factor -- the bad pagination -- affected the OP in a way that it likely did not affect other similarly situated students.  The OP's response to seeing the extra pages was obviously strange -- however understandable it might be if we take into account the pressure of exam time -- and she made a mistake.  You have to at least admit this.

I already had that discussion with them- he absolutely refuses to admit that there was anything unreasonable about the OP's reaction to this "problem."