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FMyLife
anonymous United States

Today, I got a question wrong on an exam. The question started with, "In your opinion..." FML

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Halloween

A failed costume, stolen candy and a very real scare: Halloween, the one night when fear is allowed.

Same thing different taste

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Flyndaran 10

Opinion is not synonomous with wild incoherent BS. If you can't defend your opinion with logic, then it should be marked wrong.

claudiajean 24

Unfortunately, exams never want your opinion. What this really means is, "Write a balanced answer based on facts from both sides". It sucks and it's annoying, but that's how it is! Took me a while to get to grips with it but once it clicks, you'll be fine! And it's actually easier to write like that in the end

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Comments (28)

pantsareathing 8

I notice that almost every comment here is saying that OP was wrong because they didn't justify their answer. How do you know that this is the case? Do you know OP? Or are you just assuming that this is the case because the teacher/professor is always right? Now, I agree that if OP didn't provide adequate support for their opinion, or adequate understanding of the material in general, they should be marked wrong. But, from the post alone, we have no way of knowing that's what happened. Sometimes, teachers are just assholes. I had an English teacher once who did this. We were studying Shakespere's "The Merchant of Venice," and on a test, for a particular scene, we were asked "In your opinion, who was more merciless in this scene, Portia, or Shylock?" And, of course, we had to defend our opinion with examples from the play. As soon as the teacher had all of the completed tests in his hands, he told us, "By the way, if you chose Shylock, you're wrong." That was it. No points for justifying our opinion, we were just wrong because our opinion was different than his. So, until I know that this isn't the case for OP, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. I'm sorry OP. I feel your pain.

Oh_No_Not_Him 25

The thing is, the OP's only justification for their outrage is that they were asked for an opinion. The clear implication is that an opinion canot be wrong because under any other circumstances the OP could not expect us to agree that the marker was incorrect without a whole lot more information. If the OP does not imply that one cannot be wrong in one's opinion then the FML might as well have read: "Today I got a question wrong in an exam. The question was "integrate the follwing by parts..."

pantsareathing 8

An opinion itself can't be wrong. The question as a whole could justifiably be graded as wrong if the response was incomplete (that is, OP didn't justify their opinion, their opinion was irrelevant to the subject matter, OP went off on a tangent and never actually stated their opinion, etc.). All in all, the situation requires more context to be judged properly. I'm giving OP the benefit of the doubt, both because of my own experience, as stated above, and because I know how hard it is to fully explain oneself within the fml's character limit.

littlebuck84 12

The teacher was probably grading the amount of effort.

panda94_fml 7

hmm.. an opinion? wrong? sounds like the internet...

kristinyash 12

They usually look for facts and logical base of your answer. You can't just BS your way through

dune3001 3

It happens. I got the same question once, and even though I have good arguments, I didn't get the credit cause my professor disagreed with me.

fictionaldiary 11

Why is that question even on the exam if there wasn't a chance it could be graded? I don't believe it should have been worded that way, but YDI for thinking you could just write anything down and get free marks on an EXAM.

yellowzinnias 20

It's perfectly possible for your question to have been marked incorrect because of the SUPPORT you used for your opinion, rather than the opinion itself. For example, if I ask, "In your opinion, was home rule the correct choice for Ireland? Why or why not?" and I get a response that says, "Yes, because British food sucks," I'm going to mark it incorrect. I could care less about their answer to the first part, but they need to demonstrate their understanding of the material in the second part, and all that answer says to me is, "I didn't read."