January 29, 2020

Dutchman fails test 10 times, needs it to graduate

Filed under: Online,Science,Weird by Orangemaster @ 3:44 pm

For the past couple of years 22-year-old university student at the Eindhoven University of Technology keeps failing the same two exams over and over, stopping him from graduating. The exams are calculus and ‘some kind of algebra’, whatever that means. Both exams are from his first year, and he’s now in his fourth year.

He’s not too worried, but his friends think it’s amusing. On Heeft Daan calculus al gehaald (‘Has Daan finally passed calculus?’) you can check his progress. His friends helped build the site.

In the Netherlands grades go from 0 to 10, and on Daan’s last attempt at passing the calculus test, he got a two. “I felt like shit,” he said. In a way, I want to Daan to pass because he’s very much the underdog, and in another, I’m glad he’s not studying to be a doctor or a dentist.

There’s another Dutch concept that’s good to know, it’s called the ‘zesjescultuur’ (‘sixes culture’, as in 6 out of 10, a passing grade) and for many people that’s enough.

Daan’s the poster boy for it now.

(Link: www.nhnieuws.nl)

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May 11, 2018

HEMA pulls bad protractors before finals

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 5:18 pm

800px-Protractor2

Lonneke van Krimpen was studying for her final exam in geometry at the secondary school level and noticed something was off. She did a practice question from a 2014 exam and noticed that her protractor was wrong. A friend of hers apparently had the same issue and so they told HEMA that their protractors were badly made.

HEMA was happy to be told this especially before the entire country takes their final exams. They said they have pulled their protractors from the shelves, flagged their inventory, and even blocked any sales of them at the cash register. As well, anyone with a bad instrument can trade it in for a good one.

The specific problem is that between the 50 and 60 there are 11 spaces, and between 60 and 70 there are 10, when in both cases there should be nine.

(Link: telegraaf.nl, Photo of Protractor by Richard Wheeler (Zephyris), some rights reserved)

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May 31, 2015

Dozens of spiders ‘attack’ students during exam

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 11:58 pm

High school students in Zaltbommel got a fright when dozens of spiders came crawling under the doors of the sports facility in which they were having their written graduation tests.

The exams continued uninterrupted, but afterwards at least one student wrote a complaint to LAKS (the union for secondary education students), which is how we found out. LAKS received a record number of complaints (140,000) from the 200,000 students taking exams this year. The complaints ranged from smelly teachers to difficult exam questions.

Why the spiders wanted to be in the hall is unknown. Trouw doesn’t tell.

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May 28, 2014

Noise during exams and other complaints

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:10 am

Every year at exam time the media reports on how many complaints the LAKS (national action committee for students) receives because it’s always quite a lot. This year, the tally is currently at 108,000, as compared to last year’s 147,000, with one more exam to go today.

Besides thousands of legitimate complaints about exams being too long, too complicated or just badly written, there’s some funny bits mostly related to noise. One girl complained about the djembe lessons above the classroom where she was doing her exam, saying she couldn’t concentrate. Apparently noise from a music class is a classic complaint.

In a similar category, students have complained about screaming kids coming by the exam room window who were doing their cycling test outdoors (yes, children do cycling tests here). And then to really drive home a point about noise, some students had their thoughts drowned out by a Formula 1 racing car that was ripping through town during the making of a commercial.

Then there’s general weirdness like a student with a pimple on his neck that distracted another student, the exam monitor falling asleep and snoring really loud, and good old hay fever from open windows. The most controversial could be the male students complaining about the short skirts and shorts of the female students that distracted them.

(Link: www.volkskrant.nl)

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