Just wanted to let you know about two tests.

The first involves my sister. I've driven with her a couple of times, one good, one bad. She doesn't seem to signal, doesn't look both ways, etc. Today was her driving test and wouldn't you know it, she passed. Things have changed since I've taken the driving test, but now they count the number of errors instead of going by a point system and she had 7 errors, less than the 15 needed to pass. And now another driver is on the road. Good thing there's no car for her to drive yet. I get home today and there's a nice phone call with her telling me of her triumph. She's enjoying it since she knows I didn't experience the same success she did. I took it a number of times before receiving my license. But hey, no tickets or accidents in 3+ years.

The second involves my econ midterm, which I've told to a couple of people but not the complete story. My professor proudly proclaims that there will be a midterm containing all the material discussed in class. That may include the tangents he uses to relate things to topics such as his divorce in relation to east-west migration. So I study what's in my notes. He says don't worry about it. If you were here, you'll do well. And boy was he right. The questions were verbatim from his lectures. For example, he discussed three major points of a particular article. The exam question asks what were the three major points of that article. But I noticed when I answered the question, I did it in a quarter of the page, the long ones in about a page. The three people in front of me were writing like crazy. One of them was on his second blue book when I ultimately used half of one. What details were I missing? I decide I wasn't missing anything. I wrote what he asked of us and I turned it in with 30 minutes to spare.

Flash forward to today, where he has them graded. First, he says he used a checklist for each question looking for the perfect answer. Second, he said grades were assigned in comparison to the quality of answers of the rest of the class. I was scared. I wasn't as verbose as the other people and if he's comparing what the others did, I was in deep trouble. Then he goes on to say the mean was a 75. Geez, that's pretty low for an easy test like this, though the median was an 81. He's passing out tests and gets to mine last. Open it up. 95.