Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Exam Fever

After an eventful fortnight, which comprised of a hectic week of Summer Placements followed by final days of classes, where we had on an average 2 internal assessments per day, the time is coming closer. The temperatures are rising. Not in the literal sense, but the exam fever is on.

After having spent a good four months on campus, now is the time for the real test. Though the course lays a heavy weight age on the internal assessment unlike the engineering days, the externals carry significant weight age too. The internals carry 60% of the course credits to facilitate continuous learning (Err!! What’s that?? ) and 40% of the course credits are dedicated to the externals. The main problem here is that one needs to clear both external as well as internal separately. This makes things slightly tougher, though not impossible. For people who have cleared 8 semesters of engineering, nothing is actually difficult.

These exams are going to be a tough test for many of us. It is not going to be a test of what we have learnt. It is more of a physical test as to how we are going to write continuously for as less as a hundred and twenty minutes to as much as a hundred and fifty minutes. For most of us, who have worked prior to coming here, it’s really going to be a race against time. We have literally lost the touch and the last I personally had written continuously for three hours was the last paper in my final semester of engineering. That’s over three years now and I am really struggling to hold a pen in my hands and write continuously. I observed the trailer of the same a few days back when I was writing a subjective internal assessment paper for 45 minutes. At the end of it all, I could barely manage to read what I had actually written.

Over the years after leaving college, I have hardly written consistently. I have never had the habit of maintaining a diary or a record. Whatever writing I used to do, was either one page handwritten reports or totally electronically written reports. Such was my inclination to the computer that, when last week I had to submit an assignment in a time crunched situation, I actually opened the laptop and started typing it to the surprise of many of my classmates. I was convinced that my typing was definitely faster than my writing, and also more legible too!

With this background and almost 55% of the batch in a similar situation as mine, the 10 days period from 22nd to 31st October is going to be challenging indeed. Though I am not explicitly worried about the subjects and the paper as such, I am definitely worried about what I am going to write in those hundred and twenty minutes.