my friend's a HERO! she caught an exam error and kept several others from flunking!

[Lisa]

I've just got to brag about Laura, this awesome woman I know. She and a bunch of other people took a professional exam in natural resource management. It's one of those things where you only get a couple of chances to pass -- she and some of her classmates wouldn't have been allowed another chance next year, if they didn't get it this time.

Anyway, she received word last week that she had failed. I have to admit that if it had been me, I probably would have crawled away and been too demoralized to question anything. But Laura looked at the results very carefully, and figured out that THEY HAD MADE AN ADDITION ERROR. And it wasn't just her paper -- when the authorities finally decided to look into this, they discovered that several other people were in the same situation. The mistake likely wouldn't have been uncovered if she hadn't checked. (She is certainly not prone to pitching fits, or complaining over little things -- but she just had a hunch that something was wrong, and she is persistent enough to hang in there.)

I'm a teacher, and I know that it's possible for questions or entire assignments to get overlooked by accident -- I double-check my addition, but there's always that chance, you know? We are coming up on exam season right now, so I am posting this by way of encouraging everyone who's writing or marking exams, to just do a quick look-over. It doesn't take that long, and it could save a whole lot of trouble later.

For now -- my friend is SO relieved. This professional accreditation means that she may finally be able to come back home and get a job that she really likes. (And start a family with her boyfriend!) This exam result could literally change her life -- and she totally deserves it, because if she hadn't taken the initiative on this thing, it wouldn't have happened.

[_testify_]

1. Question everything!

Your friend did a good thing. That's awesome. :thumbsup:

[Pierre.Suave]

2. Good for her

I applaud her and her efforts for herself and the others.

I had a somewhat related incident on a Chem exam once, I got 2 questions wrong on the whole thing, but when I looked at one of them I was sure I had chosen the right answer, so I raised my hand and told the professor that I was sure I had it right and infact could show him the page in the textbook that had the word for word answer on it.

In his office afterwords he asked to see the page, I showed it to him and got credit for the answer, meaning i only got one wrong question on the exam. The next class period he put a challenge to the rest of the class, if anyone else that had that question marked as I did, and could show him the answer in the book, he would give them credit for it.

To my knowledge, no one took him up on that.