I wrote this piece back in the vacation and brought to my writing group last week where it generated some varied and interesting feedback. It's a piece drawing from personal experiences in Commerce at UCT. In particular, I've tried to capture a particular archetype of lecturer. A general lack of sympathy and empathy towards students is remarkably common in Commerce, especially in the later years. But that's a whole other story. Hope you enjoy the piece.
-Imran
-Imran
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‘The student has missed the point of this
question completely’, the lecturer
thought to himself, pen in hand. He leaned back in his chair, stroking his chin, and read through the exam script one more time. There was some rough working
out and the student had manipulated a few of the equations to show a relation
between two of the variables, but he just wasn't anywhere close to the
solution. The lecturer sighed and painted the script with a large red X. 0/6.
The lecturer marked the score for the
question on the front of the booklet and tossed it into the completed pile. He
then took another exam script and paged over to the same question. That night, he
was marking question 4.2 of his 4th year Quantitative Finance class’s
final exam. Thus far it been a disappointing experience. The students had
simply not displayed any mastery of the material he had taught them. Of the
forty or so papers he’d marked, none of them had managed to attain full
marks for the question. Come to think of it, many of the questions that he’d marked
had played out the same way. Why the performance of the class had been so poor
remained a mystery to the lecturer. Given the content of the course, they
should have been better prepared. So very disappointing.
The lecturer began reading the next paper
carefully when a knock on his door interrupted his thoughts.
“Come in,” he called, quickly closing the
paper in case a student walked in.
It wasn't a student, it was his colleague, Bill.
“Hey, how’s it going,” Bill waved. Bill
worked in the same department as the lecturer. This year, he had lectured the 1st
years and the 2nd years. Judging from what the lecturer had heard,
their exam results had been rather positive. In previous years, the drop-out
rate had been much higher.
“Hey Bill,” the lecturer waved back, “It’s
going good. Just marking the final year exam scripts.”
“Ah I see,” Bill replied, “Hey Jason. The
guys and I are going out for drinks. You wanna come?”
“No,” the lecturer replied with indifference,
“I'm busy.”
“Sure,” said Bill. The invitation was
nothing but a weekly formality. The lecturer had never really attended one of
these gatherings, he always had other pressing matters to attend to. Perhaps
the reason Bill asked every Friday was due to some kind of social politeness.
“I'm marking the scripts,” the lecturer
replied, lifting up the paper, “It’s been dismal actually. Nobody has managed
to answer question 4.2 correctly.”
“Lemme see that,” said Bill. Bill walked
to the desk, picked up the booklet containing the question paper and the memo and
began paging through it. His face took on the shape of a frown, “Jeez, Jason,”
he sighed, “I told you this paper was too much.”
“Not really,” the lecturer replied, “The
students just severely underestimated it. It’s quite shocking really. I went
through a question quite similar to 4.2 in class. It was on slides 47 to 51 of
the 2nd lecture of Chapter 13. The methodology was right there and
yet no one managed to get it.”
Bill continued to leaf through the paper
with a frown.
“Look at this student for instance,” the
lecturer handed Bill the script on his table, “She wrote down two formulas but
everything from there is just incoherent. She has no idea what she’s doing.”
“Well she is kind of on the right track,”
Bill reasoned, “Everything she’s put down is correct. She just got stuck
because she couldn’t show that the supremum is always less than V10.
It was a nasty trick.”
Supremums had not been covered directly in
the course.
The lecturer shrugged, “There were far
more difficult questions that I could have asked. The students should have been
able to prove this given their 2nd year knowledge.”
“I don’t think the students are going to
be happy when they get their results,” said Bill.
“If I had asked a different question they
probably would have complained about that too. Most students are just lazy.
Even if you hand it to them on a plate, they still wouldn’t get it.”
“So, what is this student getting for the
question,” Bill asked, ignoring the lecturer’s argument. He’d heard it many a
time before and had not always appeared to agree, “1 mark for the formulae and
2 for the working out?”
“3 marks?” the lecturer smirked, “For
that? Please, she’s not even close to the answer.”
“She was two steps away,” said Bill, “It
was just the supremum trick, she didn’t get.”
“That ‘trick’, as you call it, was the
essence of the question,” the lecturer replied, “It was the optimal method of
solving that question.”
“2 marks then?” Bill asked.
“Hmmm,” the lecturer stroked his chin,
“Half a mark each for the formulae and half a mark for the working out. 1.5/6.”
Bill gave the lecturer a pained look. The
lecturer did not appear to notice.
“Jason, what if those 1.5 marks you didn’t
give are the difference between a pass and a fail?” Bill asked.
The lecturer shrugged for a second time,
“If she deserves to pass, she’ll pass. If she is unsuccessful in solving too
many questions, maybe she doesn’t deserve to pass. Perhaps she should have
understood the theory better.”
Bill’s facial expression was practically a
grimace by this point. A more socially astute person than the lecturer might
have suggested that it was a look of distaste. The lecturer, however, had not
even taken note of any of Bill’s expressions in the slightest. Bill handed the
script back to his colleague.
“Anyway I’ve got to go,” said Bill, “The
guys must be waiting for me.”
“Let me know if you pick up any hot
babes,” the lecturer winked.
“I have a wife,” Bill replied.
A moment of
silent and uncomfortable awkwardness passed between the two of them. In the
lecturer’s mind, this had been nothing more than an amusing joke. Perhaps Bill
had failed to understand this. A lengthy ten seconds passed.
“Anyway,” Bill motioned to the door with
his thumb.
“Yeah,” the lecturer replied, “Keep it
real.”
Bill left and closed the door behind him.
The lecturer snickered quietly to himself. ‘Keep it real’. Such a humorous way
to phrase a greeting. But it appeared necessary to be knowledgeable of the
latest dialect to ‘keep with the times’. In his mind, he and Bill had a
strongly positive working relationship. The lecturer glanced down at his
wristwatch. Enough time had been wasted on idle chit-chat. It was time to
return to work.
He took another script from the top of the
unmarked pile. After he read through it, he shook his head.
‘Yet another student completely fails to
understand the question,’ he thought. 0/6.
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