Simply Felicious

Having a Mariah Marathon … from MusicBox to Emancipation of Mimi

Reminds me so much of the time when I was eleven and used to stand in front of the mirror with my hairbrush..actually, it may have also been yesterday hehe..

Had my first exam today — Immunology…whatever la; one down two to go.

I am so against the concept of exams, there is no way you can judge a student’s understanding of an entire year’s worth of work in a three hour paper. It is inhumane and .. arcane, I can’t seem to remember if there’s such a word but, no…arcane means obscure; archaic is the word I’m looking for. Where was I — yeah EXAMS are an extremely archaic concept — it should be shown to the door. 

The stress and pressure surrounding the entire idea of knowing a bulk of syllabus (syllabi?) and then being tested in vast proportions on the one meagre slide that you skipped because you didn’t think it was worth anyone’s time, is not only cruel, it’s barbaric. Not to mention that exam conditions can really screw a person up — I can almost bet you that students make the same amount of stupid mistakes and careless judgements in an exam as they would if they were drunk - something happens to you in an exam hall that you can’t explain!

You write things you normally wouldn’t, you leave out things you would normally stress to death, you start giving your own version of things (p.s. I rewrote my own History during SPM hehe). It’s like the second you enter an exam hall you enter an equivalent Twilight Zone area — everything seems strange, and it never bodes well if you start to think that about your exam paper as well. No, exam conditions are not a conducive environment for anything, much less a setting in which almost your entire GPA is riding on.

No - Do Away With Exams!!!

I am going to make this one of my personal causes — join it will you?

Make everything assignment based -

• students are given the opportunity to demonstrate what they understand at length and depth and present their best work.
• It minimises the possibilities of a student slacking of an entire year and then showing up to exams with a stupid photographic memory and doing better than the entire student body put together (grr)
• There is no stress when you’re in your own room - sure you slave in the meantime, but you get the end of the year off and so do lecturers/graders…everybody wins…
• …and gets to go for Christmas vacations earlier.

If you’re a brilliant student that’s shit at handling exam stress you can say goodbye to your grades - it’s unfair, inhumane, barbaric and…say it with me…archaic.

So until that day, I still have to remind myself that I still have Genetics on Wednesday and Biochem next Tuesday, can’t boycott those — my parents will beat me, they are less likely to understand my plight…good luck to everyone sitting for exams.

Here’s to :

1. Doing Away with Exams forever
2. Equal opportunities for every student to improve their GPA in non-exam conditions
3. Less chances of losing your hair faster
4. Lower suicide rates among students in coutries where exams are the Be All and End All of life itself
5. You effectively eliminate those annoying makciks whose only goal in life is finding out how many As you got in the last exam — MYOB!
6. Earlier Xmas holidays

Med students can have their regular exams :p can’t have our doctors walk into an operating theatre and refer to an anatomy book while the patient lies on the table…

Adieu.

p.s. Kel, since you almost killed me..this one’s for you…

This entry was posted on Monday, November 6th, 2006 at 8:15 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.