Thu, 19th Sep '02, 9:50 pm::
I forgot to mention this incident in my Differential Equations (Calc4) class today. I think I am now the luckiest guy in the world. First I was 15 minutes late for the class and thought that I might miss the quiz (test). Turns out, the Prof. was late too and so I didn't miss anything. There was only one question that we had to solve, and even though I was the last one to start the quiz, I finished it the first and handed it in to the Prof. Well stupid little me solved the whole problem for the positive value, instead of the negative value that the Prof. had asked for! And I realized this only after I handed in my quiz! So I thought, damn I'm gonna get a zero now. I went to the Prof. and told him that instead of the negative parameters, I had used positives everywhere. He said, "Sorry. I can't help you." For the next 10 minutes (while everyone else was finishing the quiz) I felt really really stupid. When everyone was done with their quiz, the Prof. started to solve the problem on the board. Turns out, after 3 steps, he got stuck, because the problem was impossible to solve with a negative sign! Meaning, it was his oversight that he asked everyone to solve it using the negative - he should've told everyone to use positive values. So he said, 'Sorry. I'll be lenient in grading this quiz and won't cut points if you too got stuck at 3 steps. And you (pointing towards me), you get full points!" Damn I was sooooo happy! From almost getting a zero, I ended up getting 100% :)