These beautiful and intelligent people wrote

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  BeckiReply

  April 24, 2014 at 4:04 pm

  I hate to admit this, but as a math major in college I can still remember how furious I was with my professor over a single exam. I had never left an exam room fuming like that. That exam was in the Spring of 1991, and I can still picture that afternoon and how I felt. The worst part was that immediately after the exam I had to go out for pizza with a large group of friends, and a relatively minor comment by a friend triggered a totally inappropriate reaction (which I managed with difficulty to restrain in time). I can certainly identify with Bob here!!!

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    Krishna M. SadasivamReply

    April 24, 2014 at 8:28 pm

    Believe me: I feel your pain, Becki. As an electrical engineering student, I had an electronics class where a 94 was an ‘A’. After the final exam, I earned a 93.4475. It was a B+. The teacher didn’t round the grade – and it would have been one of the few times in engineering where I would have achieved straight ‘A’s for the term. I still think about it to this day.

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      Michael KinyonReply

      April 24, 2014 at 10:14 pm

      When I see that happen in my gradebook, I regrade the final exam. There’s too much room for error. I almost always round up. A couple of times this meant I passed people whom I would have preferred not to pass, but … c’est l’vie.

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      BeckiReply

      April 24, 2014 at 10:57 pm

      I apparently was not the only student upset with the prof after that test, and there were only 6 or 7 students in the class. I forget what my grade was, but I know two things: I never got less than a B in that prof’s classes, and he made more use of ‘the curve’ than any other prof in the dept.

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    Michael KinyonReply

    April 24, 2014 at 10:21 pm

    I’ve been doing this job for about 23 years, and I am sure I have (unintentionally) provoked that sort of fury a few times. I feel for you, Becki. I think most of us doing this try to be fair, but sometimes we don’t quite manage.

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      BeckiReply

      April 24, 2014 at 10:59 pm

      That one test was the worst I ever had with that prof. The next year I think he changed how he did his tests. (And I seemed to have more classes with him than with any of the other math profs.)

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        Michael KinyonReply

        April 24, 2014 at 11:33 pm

        That happens sometimes. I’ve had students who accidentally “majored in Kinyon”, not intentionally, but because that’s just how the scheduling worked out.

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  Michael KinyonReply

  April 24, 2014 at 10:23 pm

  By the way, I guess I should mention that although my Weenieverse counterpart in this arc is clearly intelligent and *stunningly* handsome, he is quite a bit more sadistic than I am. That problem he mentions in the previous comic is actually pretty hard for a final exam in a first course in PDEs! Although, yes, I can see myself having the conversation with Bob he is having in today’s comic. :-)