Wednesday was officially the suck. I got back my results and I not only didn’t pass, I didn’t even score close enough to merit a second grader (70+ passes, 50-70 results in a second grade). IMNSHO, the reason I failed? Well, the grader put it thusly:

Overall your paper is well written and a pleasure to read. Where your paper is lacking is in the technical detail and completeness to clearly define the worm, it’s abilities, and the specifics of it’s use. You clearly have a strong understanding of the technologies you simply need to clearly depict them in your paper. You also need to be sure to closely follow the practical’s guidelines. You are missing numerous sections that are required to complete this practical. I think that if you elaborate on the technical details of the paper and complete the missing sections that you could easily receive a passing grade.

His suggestions about additional technical information fall into the categories of:

1. Good ideas (there were two instances of this where he made good comments)
2. Things he missed (one of his complaints was likely because he didn’t read the appendices where what he was looking for was included)
3. Things my boss cut (some of the details were cut for security reasons or couldn’t be included; incidentally, this was mentioned in the introduction of the paper)

So basically, I had two sections where I will be updating to include some new information. As to the ‘missing sections required to complete’, they’re unrelated. The topic I chose was not the typical cookie-cutter topic, and so some of the sections were totally irrelevant. For example; scanning. A whole section about how the ‘attacker’ scanned your network. In this instance, the attacker was a email worm. It does no scanning what-so-ever. Any section I added would look like this:

Scanning
This is an email worm. It doesn’t do any scanning. Please don’t penalize me because the worm doesn’t scan.

Next section.

There were a few sections like this that I intentionally omitted because they were totally irrelevant. But apparently the grader is either stuck in a grading rubric that he cannot change, or not able to figure out that the sections are useless. Either way, I’m almost positive that the majority of my points off were for sections I intentionally did not include because they weren’t appropriate.

Apparently they don’t want interesting, insightful papers on new and worthwhile things, they just want to make sure you can fill out the skeleton they give you exactly according to form.

I’m sure you can tell I’m more than a little peeved about this. I’ve got to pay $150 to get a re-grade, and I really don’t think it’s right. Sadly for me, I’m huge on the J of Myers-Briggs, so I’m all about the right and wrong in the world. So when I perceive something definitely ‘wrong’ I get cranky.

Oh well, growing experience, I suppose. When people ask for something that includes anal and stupid parts, see if they really want it and give it to them despite it decreasing the overall quality of the product.

Posted by Jordan on Thursday, October 14th, 2004 at 8:44 pm.