How bad does an essay or similar have to be to get 40 or less?

I ask this sadly out of necessity ha, essentially I messed up an exam and somehow just forgot that it was a 'seen' exam (so the exam questions were uploaded a week before and we had that week to do the 'exam' :wink:

, in my mind I only had one of these and one 'normal' but apparently not! It's obviously a completely colossally stupid mistake and I know I only have myself to blame.

Anyway clearly I realised when I opened the exam... The breakdown the lecturer gave us for how long each aspect of the exam should take totalled something like 12-14 hours from memory. The actual exam period was standard length so something like 3 hours. I'm sure you can see where this is going... It also had to be fully referenced with a bibliography since it wasn't really an exam in the traditional sense otherwise I might have had more time to actually write (one perk is at least I have a full bibliography so I'm not going to get done for plagiarism! Not that theres much there to have plagiarised! Anyway the result is pretty bad. I don't actually think it's worth 40 to be completely frank, it's a total mess.

So, how bad is 40, and how bad is 30, and how bad is 20, or 10, or 0?

The saving graces (there aren't many) are that I actually managed to write more than nothing, I did manage to reference it and put the bibliography in so could be worse, I think thats honestly it... The actual thing is a policy brief not an essay so slightly different but I did manage to at least make some form of policy recommendation and had some level of reasoning as to why.

On the other hand, in my panic (because you best believe I was panicking, I don't think my hands have ever trembled so much) I managed to accidentally write "The USA" where I meant to say "Iran" which I cannot even comprehend how you'd do and as I'm sure is obvious is pretty not great. Its obviously well below the word count, and really just generally lacking in quality (or even half decent) analysis or really anything. Clearly there's not even a remnant of a structure because its barely there.

I know I won't know until I know, but I suppose I just want to look at the thing really honestly and try and have a guess the likelihood of me having failed the exam/module. I'm not sure it would change much, it's not as if I can actually do anything about it, but knowing where I actually stand would be nice rather than having it as a spectre thats haunting my holidays. I'd give the thing to someone to read along with a mark scheme but I'm not sure I can bare the shame of someone I know actually reading it so I'm hoping to just get a better idea of what the really really low stuff looks like.

And kids, please make sure you write down completely accurately the format of your exams, you'd think it would be obvious considering but maybe just double check anyway!