IT Job
Usually when there's a problem with a computer, it's the user's fault. Literally, 9 times out of 10 the user did something stupid. For example, there was this guy who accidentally deleted all of his excel/word documents when he cleaned his temporary files. Here's how he saved word files!
1) Make word file, write in it, do normal user things
2) Save As, direct file to the temporary files folder (WHY?)
3) Go to start->documents, right click on word file in the list, make a shortcut and send it to the My Documents folder
You can see how this is a bad idea. It works so long as you don't ever tell Windows to delete your temporary files in the temporary folder. Suddenly you'll have a bunch of shortcuts in My Documents that don't even point to anything!
Grading for an introductory physics course for 3 semesters
- If you're very smart with cheating, you can get away with it even if we catch you. Glancing at a neighbor's paper is not enough to get you caught. There's no way we can state with 100% confidence that you were copying answers unless you foolishly copy answers form a different test form!
- Some professors will have different colored tests, indicating that there are 2 test forms. Obviously people with the blue test shouldn't copy off of people with the white test. Some professors tka ehtis one step further and make different forms of colored tests, so that you can't be sur eif your blue test is the same as someone else's blue test! In other words, there's a Blue Test A and a Blue Test B, so you can easily be caught there
- The punishment for cheating generally fits the crime. If you would have gotten a good grade in a course, then you'll fail the course. If you were going to fail or get a D anyway, then your transcript will receive a black mark indicating that you've cheated, and no school will accept you for a minimum of 2.5 years. That's when the black mark is removed for some reason. I think it may vary from school to school.
- Going to class makes a huge difference in how well you perform on tests. It doesn't matter how much natural intelligence you have. You can get the same grade if you either go to class or take 3x more time studying on your own.
- Many grading decisions are fudged and done on the fly. Two people may do the same thing on a test question and receive different scores.
- If you complain to the average professor about a test grade, chances are that you'll receive more points if you make a convincing argument and actually know what you're doing. Some professors go the other way though and will end up removing more points than you originally had.
- When the professor jokes that he and his TAs are going to grade the exams over pizza and beer, he's actually being serious.
- We laugh at stupid written responses. We laugh heartily. Sometimes we laugh nonstop for 5+ minutes from just one response. We appreciate your bizarre responses
- We go easier on your other problems if you leave one of them completely blank. If you fish for the right answer, we are merciless on the rest of your problems. If you realize that you don't know how to do a problem, just write that and you'll probably receive mercy.
- Nicely drawn pictures are greatly appreciated, even if they have nothing to do with the problem