First, I must apologize, dear reader, for not writing in over a month. What is my excuse? I was busy…with school. Is this cliché? Yes. Very. And I apologize once again. However, during this month of mayhem, I have discovered something that drives me crazy, so I am therefore going to commence whining about it:
Low-question tests.
Those ones where there are like 40 questions, meaning that there are over 2 points per question. Especially when the entire quiz is true and false or multiple choice. Yeeaahh…I don’t like those. I mean, who thought those were a good idea? They don’t even make sense! Yes, I know my opponents will say “but longer tests are hard!” Yes, they may be hard, but you’re going to appreciate missing 11 questions and getting an 89% than you will appreciate missing 11 and getting something around a 75%. The issue comes down to points per question…it doesn’t (in my whiny, stressed, college opinion) reflect the knowledge that a student has possibly gathered to test a wide body of material in anything under 50 questions. Because, even if the student knows that there are only, say, 35 questions on the test, they are probably going to study all 87 pages of notes anyways, just to be prepared because they don’t know what’s going to be included in the test. So really, it’s not like longer tests are going to take more time to prepare for anyways—the student will study the same amount because they don’t know what will be on the test, and will be penalized less for missing a “reasonable” (what that entails is up for grabs) number of questions.
Does this irritate anybody else? Be warned, I’m tired, dealing with finals this week, and am going home for Christmas break in a week—motivation is low. But these are my thoughts…maybe finals wouldn’t be so bad if I knew that missing a few questions wouldn’t bomb my grade…a little “room to fail” would be nice.
Do I feel a scathing article about the crass commercialization of Christmas coming on sometime soon? I think so. Get excited.
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