The marks for this term’s first coursework in my information systems engineering module were released yesterday. The headline is I scored 91%. The ugly details are:

• requirements
• my submission
• my mark breakdown
• lecturer’s overall comments
• my marks so far (86% of available marks).

I’m amused by my mismanagment of expectations. I’d enquired when the marks would be released and was told that release was imminent. The lecturer also said ‘I can say, Bruce, that yours was of exceptionally high quality and was the best in class….(as they say at Crufts).’ So I started fantacising about receiving a D5 (95 to 100%) and was then momentarily disappointed to receive a slightly lower mark.

In truth, I’m not happy with some of my submission and so expected a lower mark: the ‘software development methods’ section, in particular, is thin. (I believe that the ‘history’ paragraphs wouldn’t be in a real proposal but were included in the requirements to test our understanding of agile software development.)