[Prudence]

Notice to my torts professor:

You clearly are confused about the meaning of "optional extra credit." By the very words used it implies that it is, well, optional. And extra. For everyone else in the world except you, this means that if one does the optional extra credit, one's final grade may be raised. And if one doesn't, one's grade stays the same.

Let's look at an example: If I get an A- without the extra credit, my final grade is an A-. If I do the extra credit and add enough points to make an A, I get an A.

When you are working with a mandatory curve, this does not work. If I get an A- without the extra credit, but there can only be, say 5 people who receive an A-, and if 5 people who otherwise had a B+ do the extra credit and earn enough points to get an A-, then not only do they get their A-, but my grade is *lowered* to make room for their increase. So I get a B+.

This is not extra credit. It's a take home exam question. Period.

And yes, I could elect not to do it. I could also elect not to do any of the exam questions with exactly the same results. I suppose technically that makes it optional, but not if I want to continue in this program.

And you're not posting it until Friday evening but it's due Monday morning?

Gee, here I thought I'd study for the "real' exam this weekend. Thanks for all the notice.