Just Asking: Part 3

Singlehandedly changing a course policy, and the 120 pages that went into it

I was taking a computer architecture course at my University, and had gathered with 14 classmates in an empty lecture hall the day before the first exam. The professor had released a study guide for the first exam, and I was religiously going through it with the others. At around 11pm, we all called and went to sleep.

During the exam itself, I was astonished to see that nothing I had studied was on it. Zero overlap. I walked out of the exam pretty unconfident, since I had been completely blindsided. As expected, I bombed that exam.

I then ran some calculations and found that I would need to average a 96 in the next two exams to ensure I got a 97 on the final to secure an A in the class. So I got to studying. In preparation for the second exam, I studied everything, filling up 40-50 sheets of paper practicing the material. While studying with some people, one guy came for 10-15 minutes and didn’t make an effort to learn/practice any of the content. People began asking him if he was taking the exam, since he didn’t seem to know much about the material. He happily said he was going to skip the exam. We were all surprised, and thought he was “planning” to be sick or had some family things going on.

He then explained his strategy: he had bombed the first exam (like me), and after running the calculations came to the conclusion that his average score across the remaining two exams would have to be higher than if he just took the final exam. He read the fine print in the syllabus and saw that any skipped exams would have their weightage (for the final grade) added on to the weightage of the final exam. HIs strategy was sound.

On the day of the exam, I found he wasn’t the only one employing the strategy. There were half as many people in that room as there were during the first exam. On this exam, my studying paid off, but I didn’t hit the mark I set for myself. Short by around 4 points, I knew I had to score higher on this third exam.

Again, I went through 30-40 sheets of paper practicing like there was no tomorrow for the third exam. In our group study sessions before the exam, I was leading the topic discussion. My practice had given me deep knowledge of the course material that I could honestly do the problems in my sleep. Those around me were much less confident in the material, since the course difficulty had ramped up significantly, and everything was becoming cumulative, so even small mistakes at the start would sacrifice many exam points.

On the day of the third exam, the room was basically empty. No one was there to take the exam, since they were just going to transfer its weightage to the final exam. The exam definitely wasn’t easy, but I walked out confident in myself. The grade proved my feeling, but didn’t change the final exam score I needed for an A. It was still 97 or bust.

Extremely worried about how exactly I would pull this off, I began thinking about the course policy. It would be pretty nice to have my lowest test (the first one) dropped, since that significantly reduced the grade pressure to just needing a 90 on the final. But there was nothing like this in place.

I slept on this and woke up thinking “What if I just ask the professor? She’s a pretty nice person, she’ll think it over. Even if she says no, I’ll have to get a 97, as if I have an option.” So after class, I went and asked her how there were benefits for people skipping exams, but nothing in place for those who had taken every exam (i.e., me). She said she would think it over, and I left, hopeful something would change. And change it did, when she posted an announcement stating that she’d drop the lowest test for students who had taken all three exams.

Pretty ecstatic about the tremendous grade pressure being lifted, I got to studying for the final exam. Similar to previous exams in this class, I filled up 50-60 sheets of paper practicing, and led study sessions in the weeks, days, and hours before the exam. After a point, I’d done the material so many times that I started studying for the extra credit portion of the exam, trying to eliminate every topic that had been previously tested so that I could figure out what was fair game.

I stepped into the room, did two passes of the exam and the extra credit, and left. I was pretty uncertain, since I knew that the lowered stakes were still high. I wanted that A to become reality.

Since the tests get graded a couple days after the exam (by university policy), the final exam scores and final grade results were dropped while I was group studying for another exam. I got an A as my final grade, but I dug deeper in the course grades to see I’d scored a 97 on the final. So I would’ve gotten an A anyway, regardless of the course policy change. But I would’ve been a lot more stressed if I hadn’t changed the course policy to be more fair.