Ambiguous writing in midterm exam

[Jokerhelper]

Hello guys. I was wondering if you guys could give me your opinion/advice for the following scenario:

Yesterday I wrote my first midterm in statics (1st year engineering), which is worth 30% of the final mark. The written part of this exam, worth half of the entire midterm, consisted in a series of questions that built upon one another; hence, get the first one wrong and the everything else falls apart. In my case, the first question asked for the following:
"Determine the moment due to the tension force along the vertical axis passing through O."

The way I understood the question was that I had to find the force along the vertical axis and then calculate its moment about O. The solutions for this exam were uploaded today and it turns out I was wrong. What she meant was "Determine the moment along the vertical axis passing through O due to the tension force." In hindsight, I probably should have understood that she wanted to test our knowledge of the scalar triple product.

As you can imagine, I got the rest of the question set wrong, although I did apply the correct concepts for each of them (except the first one of course). If I'm lucky I might a few half marks, but I know I already lost at least good 10% of my final mark. I generally tend to shy away from going to an instructor to "ask for marks" or anything similar, but do you guys think I should at least bring up what I felt was ambiguous wording? Or do I just look silly by doing all this and I am in the wrong?

 

[NanjoeBot]

Nut up dude. Go talk to the teacher.

 

[lisab]

It's admirable that you don't want to beg, I think that's a sign of good character. But I think in this case, it's entirely appropriate to go state your case.

You will probably have the best outcome if you go in and begin by stating that you aren't there to beg or argue, but you had an honest misunderstanding of the question.

 

[QuarkCharmer]

As long as you are respectful, and have a legitimate question/concern, it never hurts to ask. I would not say anything about what you think you deserve, rather focus on explaining the situation and why you think the question was ambigious. If it was cumulative, and the rest of the work is correct, I would think that they would at least accept the rest of it.

 

[Jokerhelper]

Thanks for the advice guys. I guess I will see how it gets marked bring up my concern, although I'm less than optimistic anything will change. Still, I'm glad I knew how to solve all the questions, so I guess that's a plus.

 

[General_Sax]

I would have interpreted the question in the same way.

You should always be clear what the question is asking during an exam.

get clarification if you need it.