Exam Time

Well its that time of the year again when u celebrate the year going by and anxiously await the New Year. Singing carols on Christmas (well am not a Christian but an atheist, but still do hope for unexpected gifts to be showered on me), enjoying time with friends and family.

Duh! that is still weeks away, its the exam season now. No family here and everyone busy deep down in books trying to scrape through and survive. Sleep is forgotten with more than half the book still waiting  to be perused. Hot coffee is your best mate helping u survive the ordeal but nothing works on the doomsdays. With no idea why a particular question was asked, and more importantly what to write ..........

The only satisfaction received from giving the exams is that you will have holidays to enjoy after the ordeal. time to go home. meet ur family. friends. gud food. no studies.  full enjoyment....

That is the hope we look forward for while sitting in the exams. The results may be good or bad (usually bad) but when u hv such a lovely hope in ur mind can one ever care????

How to think of exams as nothing but a hurdle in your path... (well one difference is hurdles block ur way but exams don't - but how to convince ur mind????) 

Open book exams

i came across the concept of an open book exam during my recent exams at IIMK. Although not a new concept but it was never tried by our university at undergraduate level (one reason could be that we didnt have many books or more importantly everything asked was a simple regurgitation of  the what all we mugged up).

So what makes an open book exam special. well for one it always affects the already tensed mind in a negative manner. Gosh!! its an open book therefore the paper wud be such that even the books won't help. it wud mostly be an application based paper..

well true. it mostly is but it saves one the hackles of mugging up formulas and all. but sometimes it also introduces a complacency in the mind as to why to study when u have the book open in ur hands. And to add icing to the cake we are even allowed to refer to our class notes(which although are not prepared, but can be photocopied from the toppers).

My experience with the open book concept has been great. Last term we had an open book for quantitative management and i read up how to interpret an excel ANOVA output right there in the exam hall. Also this term we had open book for accounting (we r not here to be accountants, the main focus is on learning the interpretation and so mugging up accounting entities is not required) was like heaven. with ur notes open do u even need to think how to make accounts, which side of the balance sheet a particular operation comes under??? HA u just look up an identical question and just replace the values and voila u hv answered the question.