Forgive me. For I have more venting to do about my econometrics course and professor.

A few weeks ago, we had a midterm exam. Because this professor always seems to find a way to humiliate me and make me feel stupid by way of finding some minor fault in my work, I really spent time studying for this exam. I worked example exercises in the textbook. I worked old exams from MIT's much more mathematically-aware econometrics course. I even worked some problems I felt were relevant from a graduate-level econometrics textbook. And I did fine on those preparatory exercises.

Then, just a few hours ago, I received the results of the examination. I received a C on said exam, measuring in absolute terms. (This particular professor claims to have some scheme whereby he doles out letter grades based on the number of standard deviations a particular student is above the mean.) To me, this says there is something wrong. Exams are supposed to measure how much a particular student has learned in a particular class, no?

Though, I suppose if one defines "class" as the set of lectures delivered by the instructor of that class, then I haven't learned very much in the "class." My professor does little to better my understanding.

On the other hand, I have learned quite a bit from reading the course's assigned text, working problems on my own, and supplementing that with readings from other econometrics texts and journal articles. It doesn't seem to unreasonable to me to say that someone who can prove the Gauss-Markov theorem probably understands it. Yet my midterm results would lead one to think I spend my spare time drooling.

In fact, using the very hypothesis tests that my midterm claims I can't perform correctly, it's fairly easy to show that the grade I received on this midterm is statistically improbable.

I try not to care too much about grades. My working theory is, "If I actually understand the material, the grade will follow," which has worked pretty well over the last seven years. (For the record, I earned an A on my more recent real analysis midterm.) But this econometrics course (and this professor's statistics course, last semester) seems to violate that postulate. So much so that my ability to gain entry to a top-flight graduate program could be jeopardized.

And to think I'm actually paying this professor's salary!