Examining My First Exam

Now that I've had the first of my two exams, I guess I should follow up on the concerns I raised in my last blog entry. When I turned off the light and put my head to the pillow last night, I was more worried about the horrifying possibility of sleeping in and missing the exam than I was about actually taking it. I don't have an actual alarm clock. It's the same as how no one in my generation wears a wristwatch. I have the time on my cell phone (or "cellular telephone" for Arrested Development fans), and I also depend on it for my alarms in the morning. Unfortunately, it has proven on a couple of occasions that it's not entirely reliable, and I've proven time and time again that I really prefer to sleep in late. I had to set a back-up alarm on my iPod Touch before I could let myself get to sleep. As it turns out, I woke up just fine this morning, though I didn't like it, and I had more than enough time to get to my exam room. I arrived at the building maybe fifteen or twenty minutes early, found the room, sat in a chair outside listening to a podcast and opening my notebook for some last minute cramming. I'm sitting on the far right end of a long row of cushy theater seats, not surprising because the room they're holding the exam in is a theater, since they need such a big space to fit all the students. I watch more and more of my peers filing into the hallway until I see a familiar face, at which point I really start to look down at my notebook more intently, keenly aware of the seat to my left that still remains open. Not for long, though. I've got nothing against this guy, really. It's just, well, you read a little about him already, because he worked with me on my first presentation, the one that didn't go well.

Not only does he sit down next to me, but he taps me on the knee first, because you know I've got my headphones in and I'm looking down. So I do the polite thing by looking up and saying hi, but I don't do all the polite things because I also keep my headphones in and go back to staring at my notebook. As soon as he sits down next to me, I smell it. He smokes fags (remember: cigarettes), and it's all over him. Like he just emptied out twenty cartons and bathed in them. So already my morning is really unpleasant, and the exam hasn't even begun yet. When the doors are finally opened, I wait for him to get up and go inside so I can sit nowhere near him. No way I could concentrate on essay writing with that level of nicotine funk. I find an empty desk and I'm reminded of what bothers me most about being a visiting student in a foreign land: everyone else here has done stuff like this several times before, so they just do it like it's nothing and nobody explains it to chumps like me. By observation of my surroundings and the papers on my desk, I figure out what I'm supposed to fill in before the exam and that I'm supposed to leave my student ID card on the desk to prove it's me or whatever. I'm starting to wonder (sorry, this isn't one of those times when I'm using the "past present," I'm actually just now wondering this): Can you tell that I'm really tired? It's not even that late, not for me anyway, but I've been exhausted for hours, and I'm just curious if it's coming through in my writing. Like, I don't know if I'd normally be so lazy as to use a phrase like "or whatever." Maybe it's just my blog prose starting to un-stiffen, which would be nice.

Oh, right, the exam. It went pretty much as I expected. There were more than twenty essay questions provided, and I only had to answer two of them. So reading all of these avaiable questions was the first task, then picking the right two for me was another matter, followed by thinking up what I was going to write about, and lastly actually writing down the two essays. All these things considered, I was definitely racing to put down all my thoughts as the last fifteen minutes or so ticked by. That said, I think I managed to create two reasonably well thought out essays given the time constraints, and I feel happy and relieved knowing how it went. I wound up writing one essay which I was prepared for (about modern developments in techniques of storytelling by looking at The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford and Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad) and one essay on a subject that I never expected to write about (sexuality in modern literature using the examples of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan). Of course, if you want to feel the reward of a job well done, it always helps to know that you were meant to do the job in the first place, and in the past two or three days I've discovered that I don't have that luxury. I should have realized this months ago, when I was introduced to the university's English literature department during orientation, but I guess I put it out of my mind and just went along for the ride. The news recently resurfaced, though, in the form of an old piece of paper I came across during my studies. Hang on, I'll stop being cryptic about it now.

So over the weekend I was looking through a bunch of handouts from past lectures when I found a sheet that I received from an English professor who ran a little intro meeting for visiting students. What I remember him telling us on the subject of finals is that often in the past visiting students haven't taken exams and have instead written an extra essay, and I was under the impression that this was merely an option. Later, during the first week of classes, I raised this concern with my Irish literature professor, who advised me to think over the possibilities and seemed to suggest that taking the exam was the reasonable thing to do. Cut back to Saturday and I'm looking down at this sheet entitled "Examination Arrangements for Visiting Students," and it says the following: "Visiting Students are not expected to sit examinations." (I did not mistype anything; it says exactly that). It continues, "Instead, a second essay should be submitted at the end of the course." With my first exam only two days away at this point, I was understandably concerned, so I emailed someone in the department that works with visiting students seeking their advice. In addition to cc-ing the professor who introduced me to all this, she sent me a series of mixed messages which basically amounted to: "Yes, take your exams. But in the past these exams have not been open to visiting students. And I've heard nothing of this policy changing. Except when I recently heard a student say something to that effect." Fast forward to when that same English professor gets in touch with us both saying that it's best that I take my exams and he'll ensure I receive credit for them, but "technically he should have submitted two essays and I made this as clear as possible at the beginning of both semesters."

I now have a few things to rant about. First of all, when he says, "as clear as possible," does he means as clear as humanly possible? Or just as is possible for him specifically? Because, between me, him, other visiting students, my Irish lit professor, and the woman I initially emailed about this, there have clearly been multiple levels of miscommunication on this front, so maybe he has a limited capacity for making things clear. (In fairness, I actually really like the guy, based on the lectures I've seen him give, and he has been of some help to me in the past couple of days.) But now, going back to the sheet that started all this, notice that the second essay which I never wrote was supposed to be due at the end of the course. Anyone who might think that such a deadline would fall around this time of year will be corrected by the very next statement on the handout: "The deadline is the same as for the first essay." So, under these circumstances, which I will remind you are supposed to be typical, I would have had to undergo approximately double the amount of essay writing assigned to the average student of the university. I would have had two essays due for each of my two classes on the same exact date. And, to top it all off, this date was in March. I'll remind you now (as I love to do) that I haven't had classes since late March, and ever since it's been kind of a joke that I'm still over here just to study and take a couple of exams. But imagine how ridiculous these circumstances would be if you removed those exams. I signed on to live in this dorm through the end of May, and no one at the university or my study abroad program advised me otherwise, and yet it is their expectation in this department that visiting students will wrap up all their schoolwork before spring break. I'd have no academic reason to be here for two months.

And while I'm ranting, the way I've undergone this semester, as I technically wasn't supposed to, doesn't seem much more sensible to me anyway. I know that I've formed biases after years immersed in the educational system of the states, but I can't shake the feeling that it's ridiculous how little time university students spend in class over here. Seminar groups meet for discussion as little as an hour a week, when at my home university such classes would be conducted for over three times that amount. Yes, that can get awfully tedious at times, but thankfully it also means I actually have time to form ideas with my peers and later I can remember fundamental things about the texts we read. Most of my studying for these exams has consisted of memorizing the names of authors and characters, which I don't have committed to memory because I simply haven't talked about them enough. Then you have the lectures over here, which take everything we've learned about the importance of conversation and interaction and engaging with a subject and just throw all that out the window. And I sense that the students here may share that view on lectures, not because of anything that I've heard them say, but because of the consistently poor attendance that I've seen for so many of the lectures that I attended in my time here. When I saw the examination room full of my peers this morning, I was shocked at the number of people who took this course, because back in those eleven weeks of lectures (ten, actually, if you don't count "reading week") I saw so few of them. Maybe I'm reaching an unfair judgment, but I think that many of my local peers understand the bare minimum amount of work that they have to do to keep up with these classes. When I think of how much more time I typically spend just sitting in class or writing more papers than what I've seen here, it bothers me to think that the degrees earned here will be worth the same as mine, or perhaps more if you take school reputation into account.

Yes, okay, I'm glad I got all of that out. Nothing like a good old fashioned rant to put a spring in your step. But I can't forget about the positive notes that you should take away from this. One of my exams is over, and it went well enough. And more importantly, through the powers of confusion and apathy alone, I got out of writing two additional essays in March. I'm not sure whether to say "Take that!" or "Thank you."

Comments

[Lauren]

I enjoyed your rant - that sounds super annoying, but it also sounds like a class schedule I'd be super down with. Hmm. My real comment is that YES, your blog voice is unstiffening! Congratulations!

[Will]

Thanks, Lauren. I'm glad to hear that about my prose. Maybe I should write every blog entry when I'm as exhausted as I was last night.

[justin bieber shoes]

I follow you VIA GFC and I love your blog!

[Aurora Orsini]

It's a good thing that you woke up just in time for your exams. I'm guessing your alarm clock, woke you up. I think you nailed that test. Essays would be easier for you since you seem to be very good at writing.