I had my first midterm exam last week in my Cultural Psychology
course. I didn’t know what to expect going into the exam, so I read through the
textbook, looked over my notes, and made a study guide—my modus operandi for
exams at Hamilton. I felt confident after studying, despite my dislike
for the structure of the test (40 multiple-choice questions; no short answers
or essays).
There are 250 students in this course, something I am unfamiliar with coming from a school that doesn't allow class
enrollment to exceed 40. There are no attendance or participation requirements and the professor doesn’t know anyone’s name. The only grades for the course
are two midterms and a final. This is not my ideal kind of
class and I don’t think this style is particularly conducive to effective
learning; however, I understand that big universities have to offer large lecture-style
classes like these.
The exam itself brought back so many memories of
standardized tests in high school: there were proctors who patrolled
the room, scanning for signs of cheating, we had to fill out our answers on
an optical answer sheet to be run through an electronic reader, and we
were required to sit three seats apart from everyone else. At Hamilton, we have
an honor code, so professors simply hand out the exams and leave the room for
the duration of the test.
Many of the questions on the test, in my opinion, were pretty
stupid. A lot of questions were overly specific, just to make sure that the students
who didn’t go to class would get them wrong. The problem, however, is that any
sensible student who actually went to class wouldn’t have written down those
pieces of information since they weren’t useful concepts, facts, or ideas. Furthermore,
some questions were vague and ambiguous, others were not worded well, and
others asked about issues that are not relevant to the core objective and focus
of the class. Needless to say, I was frustrated by the exam.
The psych department released the results of the exam
yesterday; they posted all the grades adjacent to people’s corresponding
student ID numbers. I got an 83, which I would usually be quite unhappy with,
but after looking at the other scores I didn’t feel as bad: the average was a
64 and only one person scored above a 90. What kind of a midterm has a failing
grade as the average? Even more disconcerting is the fact that this exam was
worth a third of our overall grade.
The strangest part of the whole exam experience, though, was
today in class. Our professor read, in front of the entire class, the full name of the
student and his or her exam grade for everyone who scored above a 75. After she read each name, she looked around the room and
expected the student to acknowledge him or herself, whereupon she individually
congratulated and thanked the student. It was so bizarre, and in my view, a
terrible thing to do. When she called my name, I didn’t raise my hand; I did
not want to be thanked for getting a B- on an exam, as if I was somehow better
than any of the other students in the class.
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