Grading: What is this I don't even

Grading can occasionally be a profound glimpse into the human psyche under pressure.

For instance, some people, when they don't know an answer to a question, they will try to bullshit their way to an answer. This is much easier to pull off with an oral exam. For a written exam.. not so much.

And the thing is, doing this might actually be harmful, for two reasons:

• It might ruin the overall impression of your exam - i.e. if you give a bullshit answer early on, the grader might be slightly predisposed to look less favorably upon the rest of your answers
• It might reveal your ignorance, thus actually giving you a lower grade than you would have gotten if you had just shut up.

Now, the first item above is arguably a problem - what you answer in one part of your exam shouldn't be held against you at another part. However, I think it's inevitable as long as there are humans grading.

The second item above, I'm not so sure is a problem. If some writes a satisfactory answer to a question - containing the bare minimum of what is required, not demonstrating superior understanding but still answering correctly, I might give eighty percent (say) for that question, simply because I must assume that the person knows what they are talking about. However, if that person feels like they haven't given a fulfilling answer, and then starts throwing in stuff they think might be true, then I'm getting a definitive confirmation that this person indeed doesn't know what they are talking about - thus I might actually lower the grade. To me, this makes sense - it's a kind of "innocent until proven guilty". Others take a more liberal stance, saying that as long as the right answer has been written down, it doesn't matter what else is also written.

It is of course important exactly what kind of bullshit has been written - if it's simply information that has no relevance to the question, such as demonstrating your knowledge about the human genome when asked about that of a pig, then I agree that you shouldn't be penalized - you're keeping the bullshit away from the breadbin. However, when the bullshit starts encroaching on the perfectly fine sandwich that is your basic answer, that sandwich, too, will start to smell.