Memo to Students who have been Disappointed with their Test Grades (1999) [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Memo to Students who have been Disappointed with their Test Grades (1999) [pdf]

engr.ncsu.edu

19 pointsTomte7 comments

The one time I ever aggressively studied for all of my exams (in the bulk examination period at the end of a semester, rather than the tests or exams scattered through out a course) was some of the lowest grades I ever got. For me at least it seems intensive study leading up, or through, an exam period was a net negative - with the benefit of hindsight I assume due to similar causes to the last item in this list. Presumably each person has a limit beyond which spending more time studying results in declining performance in the actual examination, and part of earlier years exam periods is to find it.

Assuming you don’t have those asshole professors who brag about failing the bulk of the class - if the majority of your class fails, and does so regularly, you’re a failure as a professor. In a paid education environment that isn’t reasonable behavior.

Respectfully, how does this relate at all to the OP’s PDF? I don’t think you’re a bot, but the tangential relatedness of your comment to the actual content of this post is confusing at best.

Is this just a knee jerk reaction to any discussion of poor student performance?

No, it's a response to the set of questions, which included a lot of "you should be spending all your time studying and doing homework for my course, for I am the only course you are doing at any one time" style mantras.

Failing that you could take it as "this questionnaire implies that there is no limit to the amount of work and study you can be doing without any possible negative repercussions".

You could also do a basic check on my user profile and go "hey, maybe this person who has been making comments of varying quality on a variety of topics for more than a decade isn't a bot (unless lambda? ;D) before functionally accusing them of being a bot, for a comment that isn't tangential given the questions in the OPs pdf?"

We then strongly disagree on expectations, then.

I don’t think this prof expects anyone but the most diligent students to confidently check each box. You should be able to get a B by doing a subset of this list.

I think it’s pretty fair. I think it’s easy for a professor to send a memo like this and not be able to retrospective enough that maybe students aren’t asking because he/she isn’t good at answering those questions or explaining those concepts well enough.

This whole pdf screams this obviously is the children’s problem not mine.

Without additional information, you’re just speculating. Not all hard teachers are bad teachers. This isn’t the right thread to speculate about how unfair the author of this PDF might have been on account of you’re interpretation of its tone.

He was just tired!

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