When you take a second year undergraduate course

I am guilty of many things, and one of them is that I typically only has one speed -- warp 9.8 -- and another one is that I over-estimate people's level of intelligence.

Often these traits (among others) come back and bite me.  Take the most recent example of my Greek Mythology midterm.  One of the questions was to describe three examples of how mortals got punished by the gods for transgression, even though the mortals' actions were purely innocent and it was actually the gods themselves that overreacted.

Now bear in mind that was the question.  Identify and discuss three examples where mortals were innocent, etc etc.  OK?

So I gave my answer, which I thought was on point.  What happened?  I got 36/50 for that question.  WTF?  I emailed the TA and asked what I had missed.  I was thinking maybe I had missed some parts of the stories, or got the characters' names wrong or something.

The response (and I gave him credit, he replied in five minutes!) was that I didn't explicitly state that these mortals were innocent.

Come again?  The whole point of the question was their innocence, no?  So why is it necessary to state that they were innocent if I identified them for the answer?  I mean, I wouldn't be using these stories if the characters were not innocent, right?

Well, ok, I still aced the midterm despite that question, but it seems kind of silly to me that I should need to state it explicitly.  I think my fault there is that it's a second year course, and the TA is marking based on a grading scheme the prof sent, which called for this and that to be stated.  Lesson learned.  Play the part of the stereotypical 19 year old second year student.  I said stereotypical, since I know from experience that there are very many exceptional students in that category who will likely think the way I did.

It also probably didn't help that I sent in my exam with an hour to spare.  The guy probably felt I didn't make use of time available...  Oh well.  That's just me.  When it's done, it's done.

OK, got two more midterms this week, so it's time to get back to studying.  Note to self: spell it out.