Reading (For Dummies)

Exams

So after talking with Phiniki a little tonight and thinking on my own, I've come to a few conclusions about European versus American testing systems.

In America, our exams are almost always written. This provides a few distinct advantages. One is that you can spend some time thinking of the proper way to formalize a definition without looking like an ass. The other is that you can prove what you know. This is because the written exams have no immediate feedback with the professor. So the prof has to ask a general sampling of the questions from the course. The questions are put there in black and white, you just have to answer.

In Europe, the exams are mostly oral. For me, at least, this is bad. You can't spend extra time on the simple questions; the professor begins tapping his watch. You have to be prepared for every possible question, and be able to answer it without hesitation. I would go so far as to say that European exams are the reverse of American; they give the professor an opportunity to demonstrate what you don't know. Like today's exams. Both went pretty much the same way. The professor asks two or three general questions until you stutter, then he starts asking more specific questions about the area that you don't know so well. If you begin to answer questions in this area, the professor will offer "advice" (in the form of primarily false statements) to try to solidify your position or else throw you completely off-balance. The rest of the exam will probably lie in the area that you don't know about. Bummer.

On the plus side, the European grading system is a little less formal. Today I got a 3,0 (on a scale where 1,0 is the best, 5,0 is the worst) in FMC, and a 5,0 in SDS. The beautiful thing is that I don't have to care about either grade. We get certificates for each course that we pass (passing being a grade greater than 5,0), which has our grade and the credits listed. We can pick and choose which grades we use to actually fulfill our academic requirements, by stapling the exam result sheet into a little academic book. So I could fail lots of courses and get 1,0 on lots of courses and end up with a 1,0 average. Strange.

The other fun thing is that, for the advanced courses (which are the bulk of our academic requirement), we can take the exams as many times as we want. During each exam the teaching assistant keeps notes on the questions that you answer right and wrong, and these records are kept by the professor. So if you want to retake the exam, the professor will look at what you messed up last time, and try to find new areas to make you mess up in =).