Points

I never really liked fighting with teachers over points on tests or projects or anything. It always kind of felt like a hyper-public and therefore acceptable form of cheating to me.

Today, we got our midterms back in Math 18 with Sergei Treil. I did a little bit better than I thought I did, but there was one question - I think question #4 - where I thought I deserved some points back. I'll try to explain...

Basically, the question was about a particle in motion. It gave you acceleration, and then you had to find the velocity by integrating the acceleration function, and then find the position by integrating the velocity function. Each time you integrate, you have to make sure that your new equation lines up with the initial conditions. In this case, the velocity at Time = 0 was -(1/2)i. When you integrated the acceleration function, that condition was already satisfied - you didn't need to do any work to get it. So I just left it how it was. Once you got that, you had to integrate to get the position function, with the intial condition that the position at Time = 0 was (0, .25). Once again, this was exactly the answer you got when you integrated - I didn't need to do any work to correct for this initial condition; it was already done for me automatically.

So I got the position function and went from there, solved the problem and got the answer right. When I got the test back, though, the grader had taken off four points. I couldn't figure out exactly why, but it looked like it might be something to do with intial conditions.

I feel like I need to say something about this so I don't seem like a hypocrite. I wasn't fighting for points just to fight him or to get him to change my grade. I only said anything because I knew that I understood the material and the question and that I - in my head - did the things he had wanted us to do on paper. I felt like I truly deserved those points, and that's the only reason I fought for them. There was another point I could have probably fought for and gotten back if I really wanted, but he gave me another point somewhere on the test that I didn't deserve, so it would be unfair to fight for that one. But this one I actually, really deserved, and that's the only reason I brought it up to him.

I kind of felt bad about it though. Deep down, I knew that I deserved those points, and in the end I think he agreed to give them to me, but I felt bad because I got the impression that he didn't understand that, and it was more just to get me to lay off of him than because I really understood it. I'd prefer that it was the second way, but ... I don't know. I don't know if it's better to get what is right in a wrong way, or to have something be wrong but at least not go about fixing it the wrong way.

Peace out.