Yea well, I didn't really start revision till now. And going through the mid-year's chem paper 2 and 3 really frustrates me. It's not frustration with my results of not doing as well as it should, but rather the fact that whoever marked my paper, I'd go as far as saying, did not know chem up to the IB level. The markscheme was adhered to too strictly, and despite real, appropriate, sensible, logical, legitamate, concrete and correct answers that I gave, simply because it wasn't in the markscheme, it was marked as wrong.
Don't tell me that just because it is stuff that is outside the syllabus that is why it is wrong. A correct answer is a correct answer.
A simple clarification that I managed to do on the day of the return of the chem paper manage to set right one of the questions that was so obviously wrong. For the other questions, I decided to give a chance, thinking that the markscheme would bring up some errors that I had overlooked, but no! it further incurred my wrath. One other question was marked wrong simply because I answered it backwards. Instead of saying yes, then explaining, I explained, then said yes. Now, how does that matter? Just because you (marker) see a wall of text at you that doesn't begin with the same sentence you see on that answer sheet doesn't mean it's wrong. You are NOT a parser... you do not parse line by line starting from the first and terminate with a fatal error on line xx just because you are expecting a T_variable or encounter an unexpected T_variable.
The best part of all is that the paper tends to hinge on the edge of the syllabus pushing students to wreck their brains for the answers. Well, my retort to such a sadistic nature is IF YOU WANT TO SET DIFFICULT PAPERS, LEARN DIFFICULT ANSWERS! YOU ASKED FOR IT!
I really should submit a request asking only him, the one and only, excellent chem teacher to mark my open ended questions everytime. The school doesn't make it easier by assuming that papers are marked correctly the moment the results are out. I agree for some papers you can't do anything about it because of too much subjectivity, i.e. essay based papers. But for chemistry... it's quite plain. Just about everytime, when the chem papers are out, I'd have to run around the school to find the teachers to get my marks back — and I only have 5mins to come up with concrete support for my answers or it will be denied.
I think, this time I'll get all my supporting evidence ready the day before the release of the chem paper, and I'll try my best to make it as exhaustive as possible, hunt the chem teachers down one after another if I need to, and of course, a check with him* should solve everything if I can ever get that far with enough evidence.