Odd Phrase Selection
It is always a bit disquieting to me when a teacher puts “Good Luck!” on a take-home essay exam with a week to the deadline. Should one need luck with infinite resources and near-infinite time?
Thinking of more fitting alternatives, however, would probably just create more panic:
- Don’t be an idiot!
- Don’t screw up this sure thing!
- Don’t hold your textbook upside down!
- Don’t have bad ideas!
Take-home essay exams are kind of nice, because they are probably the closest realistic thing to my ideal grad-level assessment, which is sitting down with the professor one-on-one over coffee and talking about the information in the class, voicing opinions and drawing conclusions.
The bad thing is that it is basically a purely subjective crapshoot, where perhaps the largest operating constraint on success (beyond baseline writing efficacy) is the grading style of the professor.
Anyway, I’m pretty happy with how all these take-home finals look, and I’m looking forward to getting them done.