Biting My Tongue
This past Monday I had my first final at Lancaster in my Monetary Economics course. In the days leading up to it, I was feeling pretty confident. Unlike a lot of the geniuses at Case, I never feel confidet for exams. However, I thought this exam would be a success since they do things differently at Lancaster:
- The past THREE years' exams were posted online. Thus, I was able to get a feel for my Professor's testing style. As an added bonus, I noticed that at least two of the questions on each exam were repeats and if they were new questions, they were just different ways to ask about the same topics. To this I said "SCORE."
- The exam was to be composed of 6 essay questions of which I would only have to choose TWO. Since each question did not deal with more than one aspect of a topic from the class, it meant that, hypothetically, I didn't have to know the entire course inside and out.
- Just to reiterate, no multiple choice questions, no fill in the blank or identifications or short answers. ESSAYS. I'd never scored lower than a 93% on an essay test.
- Also, there are no classes for third years this term. Unlike Case where you have exams, papers and projects due the last week before finals and then only two days to cram for 5 or more classes.... Lancs gives everyone a minimum of three weeks class-free to study for 4-5 exams. Furthermore, some exams are spread a week apart. For example, my schedule is May 16th, 18th, 26th and June 8th.
That said, of course I slacked off in studying and only really focused hard core the last three 1/2 days before the exam and told people how it wouldn't be too difficult. I wrote practice essays for the questions that were repeated on each exam as well as practice essays for three of the topics that showed up each year. I thought I was set.
I could't have been more wrong.
For fun, the professor switched things up this year. No repeat questions and NONE of the topics I prepared were included. Monetary economics exam and there were no questions on Keynes, Friedman or the Quantity Theory. NONE.
I am sooooo screwed. The exam was worth over 2/3 of my grade. Ughghg. Thing is, I don't know what I could have done differently. As I've said when I was complaining about this class before, there is no book, I had to teach myself material from old Micro & Macro books, I went to his office hours, but he didn't give concrete help... I know that I always say "I failed," but this time I genuinely did. One of my essays included the following brilliant response "The answer could be one of two possibilities. [Extremely irrelevant background to fill space] The first is ....." Then I left it blank. Smart huh? It took me awhile to find the correct answers - I had to google the question and do tons of research - but I eventually found out that I put down the wrong equations, got guys backwards and generally answered everything wrong. So embarassing!
Anyways... moral of the story... don't lie about your background to get into classes and don't tell people an exam is going to be a piece of cake. You just end up looking stupid.
- The past THREE years' exams were posted online. Thus, I was able to get a feel for my Professor's testing style. As an added bonus, I noticed that at least two of the questions on each exam were repeats and if they were new questions, they were just different ways to ask about the same topics. To this I said "SCORE."
- The exam was to be composed of 6 essay questions of which I would only have to choose TWO. Since each question did not deal with more than one aspect of a topic from the class, it meant that, hypothetically, I didn't have to know the entire course inside and out.
- Just to reiterate, no multiple choice questions, no fill in the blank or identifications or short answers. ESSAYS. I'd never scored lower than a 93% on an essay test.
- Also, there are no classes for third years this term. Unlike Case where you have exams, papers and projects due the last week before finals and then only two days to cram for 5 or more classes.... Lancs gives everyone a minimum of three weeks class-free to study for 4-5 exams. Furthermore, some exams are spread a week apart. For example, my schedule is May 16th, 18th, 26th and June 8th.
That said, of course I slacked off in studying and only really focused hard core the last three 1/2 days before the exam and told people how it wouldn't be too difficult. I wrote practice essays for the questions that were repeated on each exam as well as practice essays for three of the topics that showed up each year. I thought I was set.
I could't have been more wrong.
For fun, the professor switched things up this year. No repeat questions and NONE of the topics I prepared were included. Monetary economics exam and there were no questions on Keynes, Friedman or the Quantity Theory. NONE.
I am sooooo screwed. The exam was worth over 2/3 of my grade. Ughghg. Thing is, I don't know what I could have done differently. As I've said when I was complaining about this class before, there is no book, I had to teach myself material from old Micro & Macro books, I went to his office hours, but he didn't give concrete help... I know that I always say "I failed," but this time I genuinely did. One of my essays included the following brilliant response "The answer could be one of two possibilities. [Extremely irrelevant background to fill space] The first is ....." Then I left it blank. Smart huh? It took me awhile to find the correct answers - I had to google the question and do tons of research - but I eventually found out that I put down the wrong equations, got guys backwards and generally answered everything wrong. So embarassing!
Anyways... moral of the story... don't lie about your background to get into classes and don't tell people an exam is going to be a piece of cake. You just end up looking stupid.
posted by B.K. at 1:52 PM
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