Comments on: The perfect exam paper

By: socialrepublican

socialrepublican — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 05:03:17 +0000

I was blessed by the following essay question –
‘What light does Daniel Goldhagen shed on the origins of the Final Holocaust’

3000 words backing up ‘none whatsoever’, got a 76. I am look forward to doing review articles, I have the knack, methinks

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:20:22 +0000

Oh god. My coursework essays were on questions 9 and 10, my essays on the transcendental deduction was a model answer to 1 and I answered 8a several times. I apologise deeply to whoever has to mark my scripts.

In seriousnses though, it’s not a whole barrel of laughs to be writing the essays either. To prepare (what you thought was) thoroughly for a topic only to be thrown an unusual question on the day that you can’t think how to answer during the few minutes you have to actually consider and plan your answer is pretty horrendous. It feels a lot better to write four pages of semi-relevance than to scrap for a couple of sides of a properly directed answer, even if the mark gained as a result is no different.

By: bigcitylib

bigcitylib — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:45:56 +0000

The one about impassioned scribbling served me well all through university.

By: notsneaky

notsneaky — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:55:49 +0000

“Must be the heat…”

Finals.

By: lemuel pitkin

lemuel pitkin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:19:19 +0000

What a wonderfully bitchy thread.

Must be the heat…

By: not even an mba

not even an mba — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:32:33 +0000

Perfect Exam Answer:
I entend too show that [last phrase from question] by dicussing the [phrase prof used most often during course] and [random item pulled from syllabus].

[phrase most often used by prof, slightly paraphrased]. [paraphrase of entire question as statement].

Clearly, [slight paraphrase of notes about random syllabus item – memorized last night over beer and coffee].
[slightly different paraphrase of entire question as statement].

And in conclusion [last phrase of question] is demonstrated by [syllabus item] and more emportantly [prof pet phrase].

[Note: the spele-ing airroars are important. This is an exam not an assignment, you want to look ready but not overly so.]

By: Alan

Alan — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:30:40 +0000

I’m sorry…there are a number of people in this thread taking it waaaaaaaaaay too seriously. It started out as a nice piece of fun about how incredibly prone to panic most philosophy students are in exams (myself included, see #28) but now it has just got silly. (Cue Monty Python Theme).
One of my rather well known philosophy professors likes to compare exams to car crashes. Thank goodness the MA is coursework-based.

By: Righteous Bubba

Righteous Bubba — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:52:53 +0000

This sort of exam is demeaning to students and reflects a teacher who misunderstands the fundamentals of his subject and has no apparent love or respect for it.

Let me get this straight: this exam should not be given?

By: J Lee

J Lee — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:33:37 +0000

The perfect exam! Something even the teachers couldn’t answer because it is total nonsense. The fun, the seriousness, and the importance of philosophy is that it requires one to think precisely, define terms in a meaningful way, and draw conclusions and connections with life and reality. This sort of exam is demeaning to students and reflects a teacher who misunderstands the fundamentals of his subject and has no apparent love or respect for it.
JLee DPhil (Oxon)

By: pj

pj — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:27:03 +0000

“Not applicable to the quite different UK system (in which, eg, one cannot assign one’s own book, does not set the exam, and does not know, much of the time, whether the examinees are the students one taught).”

Are you familiar with the University of Oxford?

By: engels

engels — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:22:45 +0000

Thanks, abb1: that’s a model answer for Q9…

By: abb1

abb1 — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 07:22:51 +0000

Give them hell, Radek. I’m sure in most cases they reap what they sow indeed; after all they are teachers.

By: david

david — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:15:24 +0000

“Yes, but will you denounce RateYourStudents.com? Will you denounce it, sir??”

By: sara

sara — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:40:02 +0000

This reminds me of exams I graded in a history class I was TA’ing. One hapless individual stands out. He not only used purple ink, and engaged in the frantic scribbling mentioned above, he forgot to turn the pages of his blue book.

I do not lie. He presumably reached the end of one section and went on to the next while being so stoned, or in such a desperate funk, that he didn’t realize that you should turn the page when you run out of white space.

The resulting scribble was densely purple and could not be deciphered.

By: F

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:52:24 +0000

11. Make a gross generalization that is insulting to most of your audience, and then rely on differential definitions of common words to argue that they had no right to be insulted.