THU
15 AUG (16:45) - "you think exams are easy?"
Today, as you
might have read in the updates (hell, if any of you actually bother reading
them!), I received my exams results. They were for my AS Levels (Biology=B;
English Literature=A; General Studies=B; Mathematics=C; ICT=[results released
Jan 2003]). These results are good, but the system says it's all wrong, that the
exams are getting easier. I admit that the system might be right, but then
again, this is coming from somebody who doesn't struggle with their studies.
You're patronized when you fail or score awful grades, and you're treated
suspiciously and/or shot down if you achieve or score good ones. You can't win.
And the system says it's all wrong.
I watched a
news broadcast last night (it interrupted the transmission of James Bond, The
Living Daylights - and I was only watching because there was this bad guy who
threw exploding milk bottles!), and there was a Physics guy and a Southern
student commenting on the results of this year's students. The Physics guy told
us that he thought the exams were getting easier, whilst the Southern guy told
us how there were just good and bad exam periods every year, which had nothing
to do with the exams getting easier at all.
Firstly,
Physics is a damn hard subject, man! What the hell do you think our brain
cells are made of?! And it is true about the good and bad exams periods. In
December, I took a Biology exam and scored a D. Today, I scored an A, and only
because the exam paper was easier than its predecessor, which was difficult
because the damned questions were written in Latin! (I'm kidding, but you catch
my drift.)
Exams aren't
easy. You're calm, you're nervous, you're totally on the road to a mental
breakdown, what the hell. It's the English that makes the exam easy/hard. If you
don't revise for the exam, fair enough, you do crap. You don't complain. But if
you don't understand the question because the English it was written in must
have been bred with Double Dutch, then for crying out loud, the system should
complain to itself! (For instance: 'Explain to the trout why it would be
difficult to exchange... blah blah blah?' How can you explain a biological
concept to a fish? Or a seal? When it won't even understand or
care why the hell it breathes the way it does???)
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