I'm in the middle of a boatload of exam marking at the moment. You'd be amazed how quickly deciphering responses to the same short answer questions melts your braincells. Between the sugar high from our official Exam Marking Supplies (read: kool mints and salt n' vinegar chippies - absolutely essential when tying oneself to a chair to mark two hundred exams) and the student's actual exams, my mind was incapable of anything more complex than inane worbles by 5pm last night.

It amazes me the number of students who clearly have not read the question. They see three keywords in a sentence and rattle off about one of them, when what the question was really asking was the difference between the other two. I don't know whether they're panicking, or they genuinely don't know about the other two and are hoping I'll grant marks for the fact that they know something, or their reading comprehension really is that poor. Perhaps that's the reason all those agents are constantly badgered by people who haven't read their submission guidelines.

Been keeping an eye out for the classic Student Response gems. So far, my favourite has been an answer to the difference between a risk and a problem:

a problem is what happens when you have a problem that becomes problematic, a risk is when that could be a problem.

Nice recursion there. Sadly, this is Software Engineering, not English - I don't get to ding him for using the defined term within the definition, not even when it is, in fact, standing in for every meaningful word in that sentence. Ahh, students.