By Madison Hadfield
Exam time at Carleton: where you can find engineers walking the tunnels like zombies and all students fuelled by energy drinks and self-hatred. Now that first term’s exams are over and done with, it’s time to take a step back and reflect. It’s no secret that students detest exams, and everyone has their own reasons. So, I present to you 5 reasons why I think we need to pull the plug on exams.
- Stress
The most obvious reason for the elimination of exams is the stress they puts on students. Students experience tremendous pressure from various sources, like the need to maintain a scholarship, averages required to remain in their program, and pressure from parents to succeed. We are too often led to believe that our self-worth is based off a grade, and this simply isn’t true. But it forces us to push ourselves too hard, and stress over the possibility of failing. There’s a reason we have two reading weeks now, people. Because stress is such a big factor into illness and mental instability, administrators should rethink this process in which students are stressed to their breaking point.
- Unhealthy eating
With stress comes stress-eating. This is the practice of stuffing your face with comfort food in order to relieve anxiety. Throw in the constructed intuitive need for caffeine and eating late at night, exam time really does a number on your health. Energy drinks become a hot commodity on campus, as shelves once stocked with Monsters in the convenience stores quickly become stripped bare. Coming from someone who is caffeine sensitive (a single cup of coffee gives me the shakes), I know first hand the affects caffeine has on students. When the struggle to stay awake is all too real, caffeine seems like the only answer. Instead of dozing off, students down red eyes (coffee with an espresso shot). With the amounts of food and caffeine we dump into our bodies during exam time, it’s not hard to realize where that dreaded “freshman 15” can come from.
- Out-of-Sync Sleeping Patterns
Pulling all-nighters to study may seem like a good idea at the time, but not when you’re walking back from your exam in a daze and you feel like you’re about to drop dead. You can’t help but take a much-needed nap as soon as you get home, and then you’re back at it again, staying up late to study for your next exam. It’s a vicious cycle that only leads to sleep deprivation and a lack of regular routine. Hello exams, goodbye sleeping schedule.
- Exam proctors
Exam proctors are reason enough to eliminate exams. I am convinced that whoever is in charge of hiring these people chooses the most obnoxious, power trippy people they can. During one of my exams, a proctor stood over me and stared as I signed the attendance sheet. I was so distracted by it I couldn’t even remember my own student number. Exams are stressful enough without a mean-looking man breathing down your neck. The rules they enforce are just as ridiculous: No drinks except water? Better leave that soothing tea at home. Wouldn’t want to calm you down during your final or anything. Accurate depiction of an exam proctor:
- Memorizing does NOT equal learning
Studying for exams easily turns into teaching yourself an entire term’s worth of course material in one night. And after all the stress and hard work, what do we walk away with? A grade, and not much else. Most students don’t retain the knowledge they crammed to “learn” the night before their exam. I would argue that memorizing does not require actual thinking. It isn’t enough to merely know the textbook definition of culture shock; you need to understand it, why it’s significant, and what the implications of it are.
Until education administrators realize that there are better ways to teach and test, exams will continue to cause much stress and anxiety among students. In a system that claims to be set on educating people, it’s obvious that exams fail us, not vice versa.
Image sources:https://33.media.tumblr.com/dab2ba83f0af51f6e7b1e43b94539d9b/tumblr_nhs6…