Who knew that when you went to college that there would be things such as take home exams. I didn’t even have those in high school, I had not even fathomed anything like that in my 13 years of attending a public school. Anyway I digress, they exist here in the land of collegiate education and typically they let you use your notes from class. If you are really lucky, they encourage conspiring with your peers (as long as you mention that you worked with them, plagiarism and all that). All of this aside, I was taking one of these glorious, God given blessing from above the other day, and these are five things that went through my sleep deprived brain.
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I can use my notes?
This is the number one blessing and curse of the take-home exams. Especially when I had to find the topic in my notebook, and then decode the highly encrypted technical jargon I used during class when I might have understood it, but that is no longer true.
2. Is this a trick question?
Sometimes the questions on the exam are easy… Why are they easy? This is a take-home, I was prepared for the worst.
3. This one is also kind of easy, another easy one?
A different question, but same difficulty? Is this a joke or is it harder than I originally thought, is my answer enough? I hope there is enough detail in my answer and I hope that I am understanding the question. *Panic and confusion ensues*
4. Starts over analyzing EVERY SINGLE QUESTION on the test.
Did I do this right? Does the professor want a different answer. There is more than one answer, which one do I pick, which answer would my professor award more highly? *More panic and confusion as to why you took this class and if the professor may just want you dead.*
5. Well, I am glad that was a take home.
The original thought of this being easy went out the window about 3 hours ago. Now I appreciate that this was a take home, because if this was supposed to be taken in class, I would have passed out from the stress and/or not recognized that the questions were more intricate.
Needless to say, I love having take-home exams, because they taught me to use my resources wisely and then how to apply my learned knowledge to a specific task. In the “real world”, a person does not need to memorize information for a test, a person needs to take knowledge and apply it to a situation or project. Sure it is helpful to know information off the top of your head, but there are so many resources out there to use in order to remind or further educate yourself on topics that memorization is not at all necessary. It is the thinking process that needs to be taught at a collegiate level, not just spitting out information onto a sheet of paper and not knowing how to apply said information.
*Steps off of soap box, carries it away with me to further spread my thoughts on education*