Word: grader
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Just exactly what our equivocator's answer has to do with the original question is hard to say. The equivocator writes an essay about the point, but never on it. Consequently, the grader often mentally assumes that the right answer is known by the equivocator and marks the essay as an extension of the point rather than a complete irrelevance. The Artful Equivocation must imply the writer knows the right answer, but it must never get definite enough to eliminate any possibilities...
...long run the expert in the use of unwarranted assumptions comes off better than the equivocator. He would deal with our question on Hume not by baffling the grader or by fencing with him but like this. "It is absurd to discuss whether Hume is representative of the age in which he lived unless we note the progress of that age on all intellectual fronts. After all, Hume did not live in a vacuum...
...this point our assumption expert proceeds to discuss anything which strikes his fancy at the moment. If he can sneak the first assumption post the grader, then the rest is clear sailing. If he fails, he still gets a fair amount of credit for his irrelevant but fact-filled discussion of scientific progress in the 18th century. And it is amazing what some graders will swallow in the name of intellectual freedom...
Crimson editors over the decades have made some memorable attempts to capture exam period in newsprint. The top article, "Beating the System, won the Dana Reed Prize for undergraduate writing in 1951. The Crimson proudly ran it every reading period until 1962, when it irked one maligned and anonymous grader enough to reply...
...right, of course, about the third alternative, and a very sensible one it is--working out some system of fooling the grader, although I think I should prefer the word "impressing." We admit to being impressionable, but not to being hyper-credulous simps. His first two tactics for system beating, his Vague Generalities and Artful Equivocation, seem to presume the latter, and are only going to convince Crimson-reading graders (there are a few and we tell our fiends) that the time has come to tighten the screws just a bit more...