I’ve gotten the math teacher version of this complaint:” all my other professors give me A’s and you didn’t! And I proof-read my work and everything. I don’t understand what you want, so could you write up some personalized guidelines telling me what to do so that I can make sure and follow your instructions? Thanks!”The math teacher version, of course, is “I memorized how to do the problem you did in class, but then on the test you put a DIFFERENT problem, and you never showed us how to do THAT one, and it’s not fair! My method of doing math by memorizing formulas and then blindly applying them to problems that are identical to the ones I’ve seen has gotten me A’s until now, so what gives?”"It’s been several years, and I still haven’t come up with a tactful way to say, “the reason you used to get A’s is because your education has failed you, as you clearly don’t have any concept of how to reason mathematically. My goal is to challenge and teach you, not further your illusion of yourself as being clever enough already.”"It’s been a bit of a rough week; can you tell?