Whenever I take a test or exam I have some crazy notations that I use that help me figure out how well I did. Typically on my exams instructors will include a point value for each question. What I like to do is go through the exam and try to add up my total to the exam before I turn it in to give me some sort of idea as to my performance. To do this, on each page I add up the total amount of points that I think I got right including partial credit. I usually go through the entire exam twice: one conservative and one liberal estimate. In the conservative estimate I only give myself credit for the answers I’m sure on. In the liberal run-through I try to give myself as much partial credit as I think I could possibly get. I write the totals in the bottom corner of the page, something like 8-12 (8 being the conservative score and 12 being the liberal score).

To aid this calculation I have another piece of notation that I frequently use. Whenever I completely make something up as an answer; essentially when I BS it to the point that it seams like it could be meaningful but, I have no idea what the actual answer is and I feel that it is clear in my answer that I have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll make a dot next to the number of the question. These questions I usually count as 0 in my run-through grade calculations. The excitement here comes when I go back through my exam once graded and see how many points I got on questions of which I had no idea what the answer was.

I have two more pieces of notations that I use when taking exam. The first is functional: I write CB to any question that I only answered partially so I’ll remember to come back. There is nothing worse than getting an exam back and realizing there is a half answered question that I could have BS’d the answer to easily but left unanswered. CB has saved me several times. Finally, KY (my favorite) stand for kick yourself. This is reserved for the special times when I change my answers. Inevitably, the answer I change to is wrong (and the one I changed from was right). This is to remind me to kick myself when I get the test back and usually I end up doing so.

As an example of this, I took a Midterm in INFO 440 two weeks ago (which I wasn’t totally prepared for). For each page my scores were 4-8/11, 1-5/13, 8-9/17zand 5-12/12. On these pages I received 9/11, 6.5/13, 11/17 and 10/12. This totals to a bout 18-36 total points from my estimates whereas my actual score was 36.5. That came as a pleasant surprise! It’s always nice to do better than expected but, it leads me to believe that the test was graded leniently which makes me in turn question my knowledge on the subject.

Oh well… Bed time…