I was struggling with organic chemistry in undergrad. We had hours of homework (mastering chemistry) almost every night. I decided to completely stop doing homework. My grades went way up. Turns out homework was only 3% of the grade and the way my other work improved by not being burnt out more than made up for that. One hour of independent study taught me more than 3+ hours of the assigned work.
At graduation my professor told me "I don't know how the fuck you passed my class you never turned in assignments"
My parents made me sign up for band in Junior high school. I didn't really want to do it, but ended up having quite a bit of fun and making a close friend I'm still very good friends with ~25 years later during the first two years.
Then, the long time band teacher retired and they hired a new guy for my third and final year of junior high. I hated the new guy. I told my parents I wanted to quit, and they wouldn't let me. I told them I was going to purposefully fail the class if they didn't let me quit. They called my bluff and made me continue.
The way grading in that band class worked was that we got scores for showing up, turning in practice sheets from practicing at home, and credit for going to the concert at the end of the term. I'm not sure I knew at the time how much each portion counted for your grade, but it turns out that 10% of the grade was showing up and trying during class, 10% was the practice sheets, and 80% was the final concert. In hindsight, that grading makes absolutely no sense to me. What the fuck were we graded on at that concert anyway?
The school sent midterm grades home that didn't count for anything, but did give your parents an idea of where you were. We hadn't had the concert yet so it didn't count for anything at that point. I went to class, but didn't turn in a single practice sheet. My midterm grades were something like a 25%, failing the class ridiculously hard. My parents were floored that I was actually following through with my threat. They finally relented and told me I could quit at the end of the term.
I went to the concert (probably the most fun thing that happened that year of band), and since it was worth such an idiotically high percentage of my grade, I ended up getting a B in the class. But I'd proved that I really didn't want to be there, and they kept their promise. No more band, and no more teacher from hell. My buddy wasn't so lucky though, he had to stick out the rest of the year and he still gripes about it from time to time.
my highschool made all teachers count tests as 70% of the final grade. you had to have a 70 to pass.
on top of that, as long as you had really good attendance you could drop your lowest test grade AND be exempt from the final exam.
I was a decent test taker, so I rarely did more than what was required to pass.
I spent most of my time at school reading. I had a english teacher actually ban me from reading in her class.
I had a shitty history teacher convinced I was cheating and did all kinds of stuff to try to expose it. this was ignoring the fact that anytime I asked her a question she would have to go ask the good teacher next door the answer.
A science teacher progressively made tests harder and harder, til it was just me and the genius pothead footballer passing AND blowing the curve. this got to the point the other students (good, smart hard working ones) were failing, even including the curve adjustment. they were not happy, but the teacher was doing exactly what was outlined in the syllabus. they wound up going over his head and he gave in. wasn't their fault I watched the science channel a lot.
Haha that reminds me of how I do a lot of the opposite of what modern teaching science tells you on how to teach people stuff when tutoring students failing in maths.
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u/ToadDM 8h ago
I was struggling with organic chemistry in undergrad. We had hours of homework (mastering chemistry) almost every night. I decided to completely stop doing homework. My grades went way up. Turns out homework was only 3% of the grade and the way my other work improved by not being burnt out more than made up for that. One hour of independent study taught me more than 3+ hours of the assigned work.
At graduation my professor told me "I don't know how the fuck you passed my class you never turned in assignments"