Exam Mess Forum

[richardhildreth]

I am a IL at at a tier 2 law school. So we have this property professor, who is terrible teacher. He is incoherent, disorganized, and awful. I learned no property from him. Anything I learned I taught myself from reading the E&E. So whatever, this is the way it is, and the administration can't really do anything about it, because he's tenured. He has been getting terrible reviews for years, and he does not get fired, and he does not retire. About a week ago, I was prepping for exams, and I looked at the exam he had on reserve. I kind of worked through it, and looked over the model answer. I made a copy of it, and brought it to the exam, which was open book.

On the actual exam, there were two questions, 1.5 hrs per question. I did the first question, which was tough, because any property I learned I learned on my own, or with the help of studying with others. The second question was the practice question. It was the exact practice question that the prof gave us! What a f-ing joke. And here's the best part - the administration realized what happened about half way through the test, and the associate dean walked in, and wrote on the board "write an answer to question two." So I wrote out the answer I had in the practice exam. However, some people did not bring that exam. And some people had not even read it. So now we have a completely ridiculous situation, where a prof has f'ed up so completely that there is no real way to fix it.

The dean has said that they will throw out the 2nd question, but that will only reward the people who realized that the 2nd question would be thrown out. And the associate dean explicitly said to write the second question. Additionally, there are 3 or 4 people, who, due to various excuses, have not taken the test yet. So there is the complicated issue of whether those people will get a full three hours to do the test (but they probably have heard by now about the mixup) or whether they only get 1.5 hours. There is no fair way to fix this,

I pay 28K a year to go here, but I feel like I go the the University of Phoenix.

[barry]

They have to throw the question out there is no way they can justify that

[shoeshine]

I pay 28K a year to go here, but I feel like I go the the University of Phoenix.

Best quote ever. I hope this gets google indexed and University of Phoenix realizes what an educational joke they are.

I am sorry about your situation, keep us posted on the outcome/grade.

[kalvano]

They have to throw the question out there is no way they can justify that

Why? If he allowed you to bring old tests and you were too lazy or stupid to do so or at least look them over, your loss.

[Cupidity]

Totally unfair. Who knows how much time others spent on the one question over the other.

[lawloser22]

Email atl

[uwb09]

I think throwing out the question is crap, but I don't think re-using an old test, that every student had access to is the end of the world.

For my fall Civ Pro final our professor re-used what was basically a duplicate of his 2006 fall exam. This exam wasn't posted in his exam bank for practicing, but somehow a a group of students got a hold of it, and even more so, before the final, these students took the exam to the professor in office hours to get the answers/explanations from him.

So he knew he gave answers to part of our section, to an old exam that he had not released to everyone, and STILL decided to use this exam as our final.

Moral of the story, if he had used one of the exams that he released to everybody as his final, I wouldn't have cared as much. Would've been irritated at his laziness, but everyone would have had the same chance to take the exams, study the exams, discuss them with him, etc...

[DwightSchruteFarms]

hahaha, i think we had the same civpro teacher. i spent 45 minutes on that "fake" erie doctrine question at the end

[missinglink]

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[usuaggie]

I go to the same school, but am in a different section. What they really need to do is let students choose to take the grade on that 1 question or take pass/fail.

[kswiss]

I go to the same the school, but different section. I'm gonna be pissed if this has any effect on the other sections. I don't see how they can fairly curve that section against the others.

[Cavalier]

I think the only fair way to fix this is to grade you all pass/fail. And given how little your professor seems to care, regardless of how well you think you know property it's probably safer to take a pass than to take your chances with the stairway method of grading.

I think you should definitely inform Above the Law. Your school may not give a damn at the moment, but if they find themselves publicly humiliated on Above the Law, they will probably take action. I doubt many people will want to attend a law school that tolerates this sort of behavior by their professors.

[traehekat]

Email atl

+1

[Grizz]

Email atl

+1

+1