He said: Cramming for tests transcends all disciplines
While I toured the architecture school during freshman orientation, the professor/guide stressed that we weren’t expected to arrive with all the skills of a designer.
“We will teach you how to draw,” he assured us.
That never happened. Trial and error, along with older student mentors, informed us how to make a building look decent on paper.
What my professors did actively shape, however, was my approach to exams. And by “approach,” I mean the complete neglect of them until the last possible thread of time. (The exam-deprived architecture curriculum doesn’t quite endorse the value of an exam either.)
It reminds me of my apartment sink, which is in a constant state of overflow. I would take the daily material from my non-design courses and pile it like dirty dishes. I’ll handle that situation, uh, sometime. Say, when no more clean spoons exist or flies abound — it’s happened.
It wasn’t a lack of interest but biased priorities.
Architecture students learn to chain themselves to their desks in “studio,” the mysterious subculture where sleep is mocked. And considering a portion of studio is literally underground, you’d think it would be primed for slumber.
Rather, the glowing environment hosts the heavy-eyed strides of designers convinced their drawings and tiny cardboard building models supply their very heartbeats. (It also showcases caffeine addiction at its best. Or worst.)
Sometimes the professors made it feel that way. The anxiety of a biology exam, for example, was laughable in comparison to a “pin up,” the peer-and-professor review of design projects. After countless nocturnal sessions, a pin up could result in praise or the advice to consider any career besides architecture. Forget cellular tissue; get the Kleenex.
With that weight crushing my spine and pride, the urgency to study for other classes only registered when a professor wrapped up a lecture with, “I’ll see you next time for the exam.”
My eyes filled like helium balloons.
“What? They’re kidding, right?”
In that volcano of academic dishes sat the syllabus without a crease of attention. With the exam confirmed, I chugged information as furiously as the coffee that kept me upright. I tweaked through tests and managed decent marks, but the recovery was awful. I did all things, architecture or otherwise, during the graveyard shift, and my body didn’t like constantly teetering on the edge of a coma.
And while that’s not why I switched to communication, I still shake my head when my architect roommate walks out our door consistently after 10 p.m. for a studio marathon.
Yet my departure didn’t particularly cure my habit; I still ignore my scholarly to-do list. And so might you. While architecture might be an extreme example, it’s become obvious that many students outside the discipline postpone studying almost as severely. Papers coated in highlighter are shuffled until the test itself falls on the desk.
It’s something easily labeled as procrastination or, more insulting, entitlement born of our silver-spoon generation. We deserve good grades just because. We want to be entertained and not educated. And while I suspect those assertions are true in some cases, it’s not even across the board. The conscious delay could be argued as a methodology, however quirky. We hear about the calm before the storm, but what about its inverse? Sometimes chaotic studying yields a composed performance.
But if we’re on the same page, this is mostly in reference to multiple choice and true-or-false analysis of intellect. Short answers and essays certainly endure, but the bubble sheet often dwarfs their appearances. Fingering through a Rolodex of facts branded in the brain from the prior evening doesn’t necessarily translate as knowledge.
Yet those who ration their studies aren’t better off by default, either. There isn’t a universal gauge of preparation. And should exams be seen as the swords that knight us or the daggers that end us? Sometimes we let ourselves believe it. Ultimately, few of us will have the need to boast exams to potential employers.
“Please see my resume for my degree — oh, and here are several Scantrons, each with a fat ‘A’ at the top.”
But your profession will expect you to perform, even if it’s not by filling in the appropriate circles. That’s an exam you don’t want to fail. The letters we receive now can be somewhat forgiving but pink slips are not.
For now though, I need some dish soap.
She said: Testing teaches how to psych yourself out
B, D, A, C, C, C, C ... crap.
You’re confidently bubbling in your multiple-choice test when suddenly you realize you have a problem.
Glancing over your Scantron, you tell yourself that only an idiot would make four answers in a row the same letter. Your professor, having produced a perspiration-inspiring test, is obviously not an idiot.
You brace yourself, grasp your eraser, and begin to re-delve into the information packed in your brain.
In college, tests make you question your decision about higher learning. Chances are that even simply writing your name on the test fills your stomach with acidic dread.
In Introductory Psychology, not only have I become reacquainted with the multiple-choice tests, but I’ve also learned that you shouldn’t cram the night before. Kurt Hoffman urged us to instead pace ourselves — patiently chew on the cud of information so as to digest it better.
I ignored the warnings. The night before my psychology midterm, I crammed.
Like any college student, I have better things to do than to study all the time. Of course I’d rather watch the obnoxious jerks on “Ghost Adventures” than memorize Somebody’s Theory of Speculative Speculation.
And alcohol? Who can study with such dangerous stuff as that around?
Once upon a time, I decided to have a few beverages to relax me while cramming for a huge literature test. Instead of reading Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” as planned, I woke up the next day with a huge amount of drool congealed on my face and neck and no time to possibly finish the book.
Oh, and guess what text most of the test questions were on?
Thankfully, such multiple-choice tests in my major are rare. Most often, we English majors are subject to the scourge of all engineering students: the test essay.
The test essay requires the test taker to take what he knows about a subject and apply it. Instead of simply narrowing down a few choices, you have to have an extensive (and impressive) body of knowledge to even begin to answer the question.
Because of this testing style, I tell my friends that instead of a B.A. in literature, I should be earning my B.S.
When you don’t really know on a test essay, you spread it on thick. You hope that, through the muck, your professor won’t catch wind of your actual ignorance.
In fact, once I did a whole essay on Chaucer’s story about chickens, and how the chickens actually represented a pent-up priest’s sexy yet sexist views about women.
That topic is really stupid. But in the scramble-and-scrawl of the test essay, an otherwise dumb idea suddenly seems like your golden ticket to passing the class.
But for me personally, no other form of exam outdoes the most dreaded of all test forms: true/false.
I feel like whoever writes true/false questions is the Dick Dastardly of testing, trying to foil you at every turn.
“True or False: Most fish have gills.”
You can’t think of any fish that don’t have gills. But it might be a trick.
You panic.
You know that there’s an exception to every rule, and maybe it’s just some weird cavefish that doesn’t like its picture taken.
Maybe they’re trying to see if you know that whales aren’t fish. So why didn’t they just ask you that in the first place?
And then you think about lungfish, but you’re pretty sure they have a set of gills too. So the lungfish settles it. You mark down “false” because all, not most, fish must have gills.
You get it wrong, and you hate fish a little after that.
But no matter whether it’s “multiple guess,” a heap of mental dung in essay form, or profanity-inducing true/false, the key to any test is to relax as much as you can.
Forget it. Push aside the fact that this test is worth 50 percent of your final grade. Don’t dwell on the fact you probably shouldn’t have watched all those reruns of “Full House” instead of studying. Just believe in your test-taking prowess.
Unless, of course, you just marked down the last nine answers as “B.” Then you might need to worry.