Turn in assignment, then realize mistake ugh

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A student shared their experience of making a significant mistake on a quiz in a Differential Equations course, despite having a perfect score on all previous assignments. The quiz involved using Laplace transforms, and the student mistakenly interpreted the variable 'y' as the dependent variable instead of recognizing it as its Laplace transform 'Y'. This error led to embarrassment and concern about how the professor might perceive their understanding of the material. Other participants in the discussion empathized, sharing similar experiences of making mistakes during assessments, emphasizing that such errors can serve as valuable learning opportunities. They noted that these moments often lead to a deeper understanding and a commitment to avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future.
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I have 100 on every assignment/test in my DE course. Today, I took one quiz out of many (of which 2 are dropped) on using Laplace transforms to solve equations. I have done dozens of these problems, with great success.

Today, the quiz was 2 problems, both of which relied heavily on the fact that the Laplace transform of y is Y (clearly). For some reason, I saw the y and thought it was the dependent variable and put town the laplace transform for t...

I turned my quiz in, she looked at it, and then gave me this look like "really?", and then it hit me the second I walked out the door. How embarrassing.

I mean, partial credit is given provided you sort of know what's up, and just make algebra errors or something, but this, well, if I looked over someones quiz with this mistake I would think they don't know what's going on with the transform, the major theory of this chapter.

This is by far the worst mistake I have ever made on an assignment, and I absolutely KNOW the correct way to do it, I have no idea what I was thinking and I'm worried the professor will think I didn't understand the concepts or do the homework! Sorry for the rant, it's frustrating!

This happened to any of you?
 
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I have a knack for overly complicating (or simplifying) some situations... especially circuit diagrams where there is some absolute modifier (like one loop with a resistance and one loop with zero, which is actually going to get the current?!). When several questions are asked I tend to 'discount' parts of the diagram that are not directly relevent, not wanting to give an easy answer of '0'.
 
harsh, but the only important thing is that you know you understand the material right? :D
 
QuarkCharmer said:
I have 100 on every assignment/test in my DE course. Today, I took one quiz out of many (of which 2 are dropped) on using Laplace transforms to solve equations. I have done dozens of these problems, with great success.

Today, the quiz was 2 problems, both of which relied heavily on the fact that the Laplace transform of y is Y (clearly). For some reason, I saw the y and thought it was the dependent variable and put town the laplace transform for t...

I turned my quiz in, she looked at it, and then gave me this look like "really?", and then it hit me the second I walked out the door. How embarrassing.

I mean, partial credit is given provided you sort of know what's up, and just make algebra errors or something, but this, well, if I looked over someones quiz with this mistake I would think they don't know what's going on with the transform, the major theory of this chapter.

This is by far the worst mistake I have ever made on an assignment, and I absolutely KNOW the correct way to do it, I have no idea what I was thinking and I'm worried the professor will think I didn't understand the concepts or do the homework! Sorry for the rant, it's frustrating!

This happened to any of you?

Hey QuarkCharmer.

Yes it has for both good and bad reasons: good because I didn't do enough repetitive exercises to drill down the computational aspects for some classes and bad when for whatever reason I just either couldn't recall or because like you I for whatever reason left my brain at the front door when I should have brought it in with my body at the time of the exam.

It could be worse.
 
Yes it's happened to me, too.

The good thing is, you will never *ever* make that mistake again.
 
lisab said:
The good thing is, you will never *ever* make that mistake again.

Yup, there are some things you have to do once, just so you learn never to do them again.

Like forgetting that rotating machinery viewed with a strobe light is still actually rotating...
 
Or not reading your exam timetable carefully enough...
 
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