Most unfair final ever

So I'm generally open to accepting criticism when I mess up on a test and accept that when I get a bad grade it's because I just didn't study enough. Well this final I took yesterday for Entomology was the worst I have ever taken. I thought tests were a way to test what you learned over the semester.

We went over caste systems of insects on 3 separate occasions but never got tested on it. We went over several different groups being parasites and their life cycle...didn't get tested on that. We learned about the dances bees use to signal where a food source is....didn't get tested on that.

Instead he puts a diagram of a beetle on there (he gave us a handout of this but said it was for our own personal use and we never actually went over it) and took a handful of families known to be plant feeders and asked us which ones had a SINGLE SPECIE of predator in them!!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

I took 5 finals this semester. That was the only one that I truly felt was written to trick the students and I hate that. Every other test of his I felt was fair and accepted that I just didn't learn something or I messed something up. But I can guarantee you I didn't get above a 75% on that test and I know well over 75% of the material. That, to me, signals that a test was not written the way it should be. I had hopes of getting an A in this class which are now out the window.

Gosh I'm so friggen livid right now. Oh and I wrote that on the test how horrible it was. I'm sure I'll be getting crap for it soon. But I really don't care. That is NOT how you test students. How horrible....to write a test over stuff you KNOW the students wouldn't study because it's such minuscule details and then ignore the huge things that we discussed several times.

I had a test the past semester where some of the questions picked on the tiniest possible detail of something (also regarding insects). Anyways, I don't think it was truly unfair because to me, anything presented in the class is fair game, unless the professor very clearly says otherwise. The professor for our class was along the lines of that the general concepts we should know already because we went over them so many times, and so we may be a bit more uncertain on the tinier details and that is the better way to determine how much the students know or don't know.

I don't think it's reasonable to say that just because you know 75% of the material you should get roughly 75%. The tests cannot cover all the material because there would be too many questions and not adequate time. Also, some stuff may be more important than others and so those get asked, or smaller details are asked because students who know more can answer those questions and know how those smaller details tie in with other details. At least that's what the professor I mentioned feels and I have to agree with him on it. I don't think though that the entire test should focus only on tiny details because I think tests should have some easier questions just so the students have some fairness in what is covered.

I wouldn't have written the stuff on the test but then again, it varies on what you wrote. If you said the test was unfair and that was it, then it may go unpunished but if you write swear words, cuss out the test, professor and so forth, or go on a long rant, then I think that's not going to be seen very well.

haha I would NEVER write cuss words on a test. The part I made a note on was a diagram of a beetle. I wrote that 2 of the areas he asked us to identify had never come up in a key before and we had never talked about them in class or in the lab so that part was unfair. The rest of the test I answered fine.

Its stuff like if you write middle femur and he wanted meso femur. Even though its the same exact thing and you encounter both terms in different keys you will get marked off for it. And you can't tell when a pointer is pointing to the coxa whether he wants forecoxa, coxal cavity etc... you can have several different names depending on what part of the body part you're talking about so I just don't think that's fair to put something like that on a lecture exam.

Especially because we have a lab for the class also where we have to identify 50 insects by memory so obviously if we can identify them by those characteristics we know what we're looking at. grrr....i'm still mad lol

I don't think that would be too big of a problem then.

If the pointer is too large so that it covers various areas, then that I think is not done properly because it shouldn't be the students' responsibility to determine what the professor wanted the arrow to point to. The part about middle femur vs. meso femur I can understand and don't think that's unfair because the scientific name is meso and not middle. I know it has the same meanings, as does saying a blood vessel is the ventral aorta vs. front aorta because the proper name is ventral, not front.

We had lab exams, not with 50 insects but with 5 animals, such as a cat, and we had to identify the parts a certain pin pointed to. So fortunately for us, the animals were very different (i.e. eel vs. cat) so we didn't have to identify the animal but we did have to identify the specific parts, the functions and what the parts may connect to (although that is easier because you can examine the animal and figure it out very fast).

I have had all those classes too with identifying parts of a shark etc....

And middle is used in keying out insects. You can look at one and it says lateral, another will say side and another will say laterad. Ventrite and sternite are the same exact thing and both are used in science. Middle and meso are the same thing and are used interchangeably.

I wasn't really looking for things to disprove what I was saying. You didn't take it so just let me vent because I am still extremely upset about this exam. And it's pretty obvious that I wasn't looking for an argument. Just wanted to vent. And yes, it was unfair.

I'm not trying to disprove nor argue with you on the matter. I agreed before and I still do that the exam wasn't entirely fair on some parts.

My guess is that if you did poorly on the exam, so will other students. As a former teacher at the college level, trust me, this will cause the professor to look at the test.

Sometimes professors just get overwhelmed (like students) at the end of the semester and will just put a test in front of you, or use one from a previous semester, or whatever.

Is it fair? good lord no, but professors are human too. I suspect your professor will not grade this exam too harshly and you will still get your A.

I know that's what I would have done if everyone bombed a final I administered.

I guess what I look at is that I consistently get the highest grades in the class. I got the highest grade on 2/3 lecture exams, a lab practical and the final lab practical. Plus I had the best collection in the class. I kind of feel like....if your best student has an 84%...maybe that means you're asking too much.

Not to mention this is ZOOL 471. Half of the students are masters/phd students and the other half are seniors. He treats it like that should be our only class. When we're all taking other 300-400 level classes. It just doesn't seem right to expect THAT much out of people who are already pressured and stacked to their fullest.

I just get upset when I don't think the grade I get is equivalent to how hard I worked. I feel that, when I put in the work I can get an A in anything. (that's proven by me passing Calculus haha). So when I study for 8 hours and get an A on a chemistry test....that's what I expect.

But when I study for WEEKS and get a C....that just doesn't sit well with me. It just seems to me like he is forgetting how it was to be in this position. He is 68...been here over 40 years and teaches a single class every semester. So it seems like he feels that because he has enough time to sit around and look over all this stuff and he thinks it's easy that we should too.

I talked to him today about it - he came into my lab. I said "you gave us those pages telling us they were for us and to help us key out insects. We never went over it in the lab" and he said "well I still gave it to you". So apparently it doesn't matter to him that he told us it was for our "own personal benefit". He pretty much said tough noogies. So we'll see. I don't think he will turn in grades with the highest one being a B so maybe he'll curve it but I doubt it.

And sorry, Gray. I was so livid when I was posting all that stuff. I shouldn't have been so harsh. I can see where you are coming from, I guess it's just different when you're the one taking it and when you're the one giving it. I just hope I never become the kind of professor that intentionally tries to trip people up on exams.

Agreed. We had a second lab test and the first lab test's average was around 40-45% varying in which lab day we were in. The second test had an average of 80-85% varying in the lab day. So sometimes I think profs think the students know more than they do but others times it's the opposite.

Many of my profs are like that, they don't care if we're taking other courses, unless there's a conflict in times for exams or tests. It sometimes gets annoying because one of my classes ends at 9 pm and I'll have a test during it, then the next day I'll have a test at 12, and for the entire week I'm working on my research paper, studying for another test, etc... .

From what I've been told, getting into grad schools years ago was much easier than it is today, although that may be for only certain fields. Regardless though, the professor may not realize that or something along those lines. But I agree with you, I think it's arrogant and downright nonsensical to think that simply because the instructor teaches only 1 course then the students take only 1 course. Other profs I've had would tell us that the content (for a 2nd year course) is easy. I end up thinking "Well it should be for him/her because they've got a PhD in it and I don't have even a Bachelor's".

You can always check on their policies. We had a course in medical pharmacology where too high of a proportion of the class got high marks on the exam so marks had to be altered bit.

It's fine, I understand.

I agree, I wouldn't want to be a prof that goes all "muhawhaw, I tricked you and you actually HAVE to know this thing I said you didn't before muhawhaw" *Fiddle with thumbs leaning back in the chair cockily*.

Don't know how but I got an A in the class. I'm not sure if it was what I said and he realized that he told us we didn't need to know that diagram or if I had the highest grade with still a B so he HAD to bump me up to an A or maybe I just did really well on the final except the last page? Whatever the reason....I'LL TAKE IT!