Exam Survival Skills

Grrr.... I know it's the same story every year and in every institution, but damnit some of my students still aren't bloody listening to me!

Is it really that hard to grasp the following exam survival skill: Write down the damn thing that you're calculating so that partially correct things are easy to find for someone who is grading 300 exams and is therefore going to be bored, exhausted, looking at things quickly, and not going to excavate things. (Floating vector identities are much easier to find if, for example, what you're actually trying to do is indicated in some sort of clear fashion!)

Giving that advice once makes sense, but stubbornness on that particularly point is just really damn stupid. (When you go into the forest, you don't annoy the bears; and when you're taking an exam, you don't annoy the graders.) I'm not giving such advice just for shits and giggles. Sigh...