Motivational screencast: The power of list comprehensions

May 28, 2014 • Florian Rathgeber

Motivational screencast: The power of list comprehensions

Demotivating experience

One of the final exams of my MSc was an oral exam by a lecturer who was known to be quite demanding and exact, but I had considered him fair and open. In the exam however that impression changed: I got stuck at a rather basic introductory question which wasn’t even covered in the course. Instead of moving on, he began to drill deeper and deeper on that question and my confidence dropped. We ended up spending so much time on that one question that we hardly covered any material from the lecture and I had no chance to demonstrate that I had a good understanding of the material. In addition, there was no observer present, which was in breach of examination regulations.

After careful consideration I decided to bring up the issue with the dean of studies and was told I could appeal, but would have to repeat the exam with the same examiner. I wanted to sort the issue amicably and contacted the lecturer, who reacted very sharply and threatened quite openly that I was welcome to appeal, but things would certainly not be any easier next time round. I had no interest to escalate the issue further and gave in, but my faith in the honesty of lecturers was severly damaged.