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February 01, 2006
a professor's take on grades
If you are law student, or know a law student, you are familiar with the "staircase theory"--professors assign a grade to each step on a staircase, throw their set of exams down the stairs, and whatever step your exam lands on determines your grade.
That's perhaps an extreme theory to explain the seeming arbitrariness of law school grades. Without a doubt, though, many, if not most, law students have trouble correlating how they feel they did on a given exam to the grade they received for that class.
But Professor Froomkin presents an alternate theory for the gap between how you feel and how you do:
My experience was that on the rare occasions when I thought I did great, I didn't do so great. And frequently, when I thought I did badly, I did very well. I came to believe that on time-limited exams, if you were able to put down everything you knew, which tended to cause a happy feeling, it was usually a sign you didn't know enough. On the other hand, if you could think of 20 more things you coulda shoulda said, which tended to create a bad feeling, it was a sign you knew the subject pretty well.Yes, the facts you describe relating to your own experience may be consistent with the "arbitrariness" theory you offer, but they are also consistent with an "unreliable subjectivity" theory that I think I experienced. And, for that matter, in classes with curves they are also consistent with a "Well or badly as I did, it was worse (or better) than the next guy" theory. Or maybe you knew some subjects better than others?
Give it a read. Something to think about, at least.
Posted by kristine at February 1, 2006 02:20 PM
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