One down!

Just got back from the first "exam" of the season, in that to call a one hour multiple choice test worth 20% of a module an exam would be akin to calling an Eastenders script a classic piece of literature, or some other crap metaphor. Anyway, there were a couple of absurdities with it - firstly, why the hell did we need 15 minutes reading time? Anyone with any sense will have interpreted that as 15 minutes "note down the answers on the question paper time to be transferred to answer sheet later" time. About half the paper was done by the time we could "start". Secondly there's the whole negative marking thing, whereby if you put down an answer and get it wrong you lose marks, meaning that instead of a 40% pass mark you actually need to get 56% of the questions correct to pass, assuming you answer all the questions (and because random guessing in this mark scheme is essentially a zero sum proposition, and there's no way that any of the questions should have been a random guess, meaning that even if you're 30% sure that something is right out of the four possible answers, mathematically it's correct to guess), and 78% to get a first. Which is a bit silly. Still, I think it went OK.

Must briefly mention a bad beat on Sunday night where I missed out on prizes in Earnshaw's hall quiz by a point, having talked myself out of two right answers. Even more of a bad beat considering that was a solo effort and some teams were the size of rugby squads. Well, must get back to contract revision now :-)

Edit: It's now snowing again.