My exam nightmare: views from academia

Guardian Co UK ^ | July 12th 2009 | David Batty

[Cardhu]

Three educators give their views on exams

Susan Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford, and director of the Royal Institution

"Back when I went to Oxford, the entrance exams for women were different. The one for Oxford I found most challenging was the general classics paper. It was a 3.5 hour paper – you had half an hour to think ,then one hour for each question. I still remember one of the questions – 'compare the ideas of empire in Greece and Rome'. That was a real high jump intellectually. Exams are good things. They prepare you for later life with the stress and anticipation."

[Cardhu]

Who else rememembers a particular question from an exam?

[Hegemony Cricket]

Question #1. Briefly and in your own words, describe the universe.

Question #1a. Give three examples.

[MissDairyGoodnessVT]

probably the only woman who would remember such a thing is Adrianna Huffington over there at that thing she calls HuffPo

[Larry Lucido]

Q. Why?

A. Because.

[Cardhu]

That is funny...

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Asian History final: Pick A or B and write everything you know:
Trace the history of the development of the relationship between (A) Japan or (B) China, and the United States from 1900 to today.
That was an eye-popper !

[CholeraJoe]

professor of synaptic pharmacology

That's a new one on me.

The best joke question I ever saw was on the Basic Science final in Med School. One 4 hour exam on 2 years of material. It read: "Given 1 liter of water, 10 moles of ATP and an Oreo cookie, create life. Show all formulas."

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

One of the questions from my Medieval Philosophy exam:

Q. Create a dialogue on the topic of Justification between Augustine, Gregory the Great, Aquinas, John Scotus Erigena, Calvin, Erasmus, and Luther.

[ErnBatavia]

Create a dialogue on the topic of Justification between Augustine, Gregory the Great, Aquinas, John Scotus Erigena, Calvin, Erasmus, and Luther.

Flood the backfield with wide receivers.

[Cheburashka]

“Given 1 liter of water, 10 moles of ATP and an Oreo cookie, create life. Show all formulas.”

---

Trick question. To make it work you need some Dr. Pepper as well.

[Cardhu]

That sure ‘...prepared you for later life with its stress and anticipation.’ :)

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

I still read philosophy every day. :)

[aft_lizard]

The hardest exam questions I have ever had were in Animal Physiology. History exams seem like grade school exams in comparison.

They would be something like(and this one is easy):

Shows EKG chart

List five diagnosis steps, why it occurs and why this patients EKG shows a sinus arrhythmia and if it can be potentially fatal.

The Professor was brutal in his grading, but thankfully he curved because his tests average was 45% but as he states if he didn’t ask them hard he wasn’t teaching us anything at all and if students expect to continue on past a bachelors classes like this were infinitely more useful then a canned multiple choice test or essay that simply depends on recall.

[martin_fierro]

[CholeraJoe]

Animal Physiology was undoubtedly the hardest course I had in college. There were people taking it for the second and third time because it was a prerequisite to Pharmacology for the Pharmacy students. Most of the questions required that you reproduce a diagram in color from the class lectures.

I got one of only 3 A’s he gave that entire year. Freshman Med School physiology was easy by comparison. The other two A’s were also in my class at Med School and we all smiled at the other guys struggling and silently thanked Dr. Ottis.

[ConservativeDude]

That’s a brutal question...especially since many of those aren’t even medieval thinkers. Talk about over-comprehensive....

[Cardhu]

if students expect to continue on past a bachelors classes like this were infinitely more useful then a canned multiple choice test or essay that simply depends on recall.

He was right, I remember sitting for a math exam - there were three questions and I had to answer two. I thought at the time that those two math questions represented a test of all the math knowledge I was supposed to have accumulated over the last 15 years.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The professor in my Asian History class opened the final exam with the following, aimed at a buddy seated next to me:
"Mr. Powers; I see you have an "A" going in this class. I have no doubt you are fully prepared to get another A in the final. I will enter that A in my notebook if you would please kindly help me protector the class during the test..."

[SES1066]

To make it work you need some Dr. Pepper as well.

Now it is a "Double Shot" Starbucks Expresso. Next it will be a can of "Red Bull" - changes with the times.

However the following S.Harris classic probably comes to mind about "Include all formulas".

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

Erasmus, Luther and Calvin are the “finishers” of medieval thought (in terms of theology), Augustine and Gregory were the beginners of it.

I guess the point of the question was to show the development over the medieval time period of how Justification was viewed by society and the Church.

Yeah, it was a pretty brutal question though.