Update: Exams

It seems rather unfair that in my final year of University, modules that are no more important (and some - I believe - are far less important) than previous ones have such a stronger weighting when it comes to the class of degree that may be so important through my life.

I've just finished the examinations for the first half of my final year, and things went well...mostly. I'm fairly confident I got >70% in all four modules, and I know I got quite a lot higher than that in the various courseworks and labs that also contribute to the module marks.

I was, however, less than happy with my performance in the Business Studies Software Engineering: Management & Metrics module I had thrust upon me.

When I started at Aston, I was originally on a Business Studies & Computer Science joint honours degree. I quickly dropped the Business half of that, preferring to actually learn some hard facts, rather than discuss buzzwords. You can naturally imagine my dismay then, when I learned that a module based entirely around bad maths, silly graphs and buzzwords would contribute to more than 6% of my final degree mark.

Further to this, once in the exam I spotted what I believed were four glaring errors on the exam paper. This, please note, was an exam paper that had supposedly been checked and ratified by at least three separate groups of people. One was admitted on the day, two I mentioned to the lecturer during the exam but he was unable to understand them, and one was ambiguous, but I'm happy to accept wasn't an error - in retrospect.

I spent most of the exam seething at the lecturer's lack of English and Maths skills, and probably made some silly errors thanks to this. I was also extremely annoyed that any error could exist in a paper which was checked by the lecturer, a Computer Science committee and an external examiner.

Still though, I think it says something about how much of the joke the module is that I'm still sure I got >70% on it - despite not turning up to any of the tutorials after seeing quite how bad the lecturer's maths skills were in the very first one.