Oh good. I do indeed remember how to exam.

[lanfykins]

I suspected my paper was probably a bit borderline, and it turns out I was right; exactly borderline, in fact. 84%, which is... technically one under a distinction, but it seems they gave it to me anyway. Which is nice.*

I am now, of course, irritated with myself for not doing better. I wonder where I lost all the other marks?

*Either they fiddled

Comments

[bateleur]

I would imagine it was just a case of mark scaling because they'd set the paper too hard.

[lanfykins]

I expect so. Most of it was fine, but all the biology questions were crazy-hard and required memorisation of obscure details rather than understanding of the base concepts. I suspect that's what's likely to have forced the thresholds down.

(Seriously, one of the questions was on a throwaway fact-ette about an obscure WW1 chemical that blocks part of the oxidative phosphorylation process, and others required you to remember every single chemical equation in every part of respiration and metabolism. Not just the inputs and products, the actual equations. The biology part of the module team were totally smoking crack.)

[bateleur]

That sounds like the symptoms of it being the turn of someone frighteningly senior to set the questions and nobody dared to fix them!

[huggyrei]

Oh, I had completely forgotten about this!

*goes to check* Woohoo, distinction!

[huggyrei]

Congratulations to us both! :)

[sesquipedality]

Congrats. And remember that perfection is not necessary, since you are already awesome.

[dr_bob]

I appreciate that your exams are different from the ones I mark, but in my experience (undergrad and now marking) 70% is a first. I'm guessing mathsy papers/MCQ style papers may have different rules.

So well done -Teh awesome.

[lanfykins]

Alas, one must take into account the easiness of the paper; thus OU firsts start from 85.

I think I'd rather have trickier papers :)