Lured by Infinity

For students, you’ve likely known the anxiety and dreadful feeling of exams, especially final exams.  I have many times–currently in my third decade of taking exams (teens, 20’s, and now 30’s).  I can recall a time, in my 20’s, when I wished that I never had to take an exam again.  Well, here I am again taking exams.  However, now I think I have a better perspective on exams than I did previously.

 I now see that exams can be a very useful tool, if administered properly.  Exams are an external motivator to review the material again.  For me and most others, going over a subject again and again is profitable for getting the material to “stick” just a bit better.  Like the old saying goes: “I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand.“  The more times that I can see and even better yet do the work, the better I will remember the subject.

 One of my former profs menitoned his methodology behind his exams.  He gave both closed-book and open-book exams.  His content and technique was based on Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives (cognitive domain).  In summary, the closed-book exams were to evaluate knowledge and comprehension, and the open-book exams were to evaluate application.  This idea extended further is that research will cover analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.  Certainly, there is some overlap in these areas.  Even the order of these areas has been debated.  Nonetheless, I appreciate this methodology behind exams.  This is much better from the students’ perspective than the final exam that you look at and say to yourself, “where did this come from?”  Here we have a clear educational goal in exams, not just to arbitrarily be able to assign a grade.

Well, I still get nervous, and I am exhausted after exams.  However, I think my perspective is better.  I hope that I will never stop learning new things–there’s so many great things to know!  And now I admit–exams have their place.