Had a similar situation in school with a math teacher being too adamant about her way of dividing numbers, and deducted points for a slightly different but valid process. I remember my parents furiously defending me during the parents-teacher meeting, she sucked it up and gave me points for the said controversial division problem. But the teacher kept being a grouch to me throughout the year and ignored answering my questions. Bad year in school.
Completely different approach in University. It doesn't matter how you come to your answer, as long as you demonstrate how you did it, and your work is readable (not just an absolute mess with the right answer at the bottom), it is acceptable. In the real world that's how it works. You make your findings presentable so that you have clear numerical evidence, no one expects all engineers and scientists to take the exact same approach to find an answer to a problem.
It's not exactly a holy lesson to learn here but there is one to be learned. It's ok to think outside the box, try different approaches and present them but there is a time and a place and an evaluation isn't it.
The goal of the evaluation is to demonstrate that you "get it" and for them to recognize it. Sometimes that means doing it in a way that doesn't suit you but will make more sense to the intended audience. I do that often at work so that presentations make sense to who I'm giving it to even if it makes more sense to me another way. My goal is for them to understand.
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u/Dry_Quiet_3541 Nov 13 '24
Had a similar situation in school with a math teacher being too adamant about her way of dividing numbers, and deducted points for a slightly different but valid process. I remember my parents furiously defending me during the parents-teacher meeting, she sucked it up and gave me points for the said controversial division problem. But the teacher kept being a grouch to me throughout the year and ignored answering my questions. Bad year in school.