1/5 of the points was in a single question. Now, it was multi-part, but if you couldn't answer the first part, you were screwed for the rest. I mulled that one over for 10-15 minutes or so, fruitlessly, when finally, in the last 5 minutes, a flash of inspiration/memory led to me coming up with an answer that seemed potentially reasonable.
Nervewracking? Certainly. But that flash at the end felt invigorating.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
I recall having a physics test back in high school that went by the rules of partial credit. For example, if a problem had four parts A, B, C, and D, and each part required the previous part's answer, you could get full points on the following parts even if you had the initial answer wrong.
On that particular test, I hit a problem where I knew how to do every step but A. After trying to come up with the correct process, some switch in my mind must have just gone "screw this" and wrote "Assume A = 5" and then used the number 5 in all of the following calculations for parts B, C, and D, which I knew for sure how to do.
My teacher wasn't super amused by this, though, and marked me off a few extra points for not even attempting to show that I tried to solve part A correctly.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
I do remember another time in my high school chemistry class where we had just learned about moles and one of the questions was to calculate how many moles of a given chemical were in some solution or something like that. A friend of mine was completely stumped and wrote "Holey moley Mr. D, I have no idea" in the answer space, which was good enough for a 3/10.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
That assume A=5 thing was brilliant lol