Prepoceros

It doesn’t feel like it should be July already, does it? Yesterday I accidentally wrote the date as April 30. Seriously.

Haven’t posted much lately because I’ve been busy*. Finals yesterday and today, which went as well as could be expected. I got the single paper assigned in my three summer classes (two PoliSci, one US History) back—it was a 95, with “excellents” all the way down the rubric. The only comments anywhere on the paper were that I used the wrong citation style (MLA instead of Chicago) and that “Civil Rights Movement” ought to be capitalized. I’ll take the grade, for sure, but this was *not* an A-caliber paper. Le sigh.

This might sound boastful, but I got a 73 on my PoliSci I final (which will probably curve to a B), after attending only 2.5 class sessions and never cracking the textbook**. I am by no means a political science whiz—I’m generally disinterested in politics and government—so this reflects more on the low standards of the class than on any special skills I might have.

I know they have to make the class mind-numbingly easy so that everyone can pass (it’s required by state law), but it’s still sad. The final exam, 100 multiple-choice, computer-graded questions, was scheduled for three hours. I finished in 40 minutes, behind at least half a dozen other people. And I had to get up at 6:45 for this? Ugh.

I wasn’t thrilled with the quality of the question-writing, either. I do actually feel qualified to opine on this—if I had to declare myself an “expert” or a “specialist” in anything, it would have to be multiple choice tests. Sad but true.

The sloppiness (slop?) was occasionally beneficial: for instance, as far as I could tell, whenever “all of the above” or “none of the above” was listed as an answer, it was correct. That got me through several questions full of terminology I’d never heard. Some of the questions were annoying, though, in that you clearly had to have been in this particular class to answer them. Like this one (more or less verbatim):

Q. Texas residents with Hispanic surnames have historically shown a dislike for the

• A. Houston Astros
• B. Chinese food
• C. Italian-Americans
• D. Texas Rangers

I’m sorry, what? Is this common knowledge? A trick question? Some sort of inside joke?

My personal opinion on exams in intro-level courses like these is that any subject-area (PoliSci, in this case) professor should be able to get a perfect score, within a margin of *maybe* one just-for-fun trivia question, though IMHO those are better left as bonuses. Any upperclassman in the major should easily pull off an A (90%) with little or no studying. This test wouldn’t have been *too* far from that ideal, but it still irked me.

If you’re wondering, I chose (D), only because I figured it might be plausible if it referred to the actual Texas Rangers (i.e., not the baseball team). I still don’t know the right answer—they had to turn off the feature that shows you all the questions and answers after you finish because people were sharing the answers with the later section. Well, duh. I hate that students cheat, and I wish they could be trusted, but when you make it that easy . . .

Ok, wow, I was totally planning to write a quick note on a completely different topic, but I just rambled on there for a while. Apologies. I’m exhausted and should go to bed now, as I’m leaving for a 2.5-week vacation tomorrow. More on that later.

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* I’ve noticed that, oftener and oftener, I’ve been leaving off the subjects of sentences (or even the subject and main verb, as in the sentence after that one). I think this habit is bleeding over from IM, where I do it ALL THE TIME, for shortness’ and casualness’ sakes, I suppose. I haven’t decided whether I’m okay with this; it’s obviously ungrammatical, but perhaps I can bend the rules a little for the sake of bloggy conversationality?

** I did remove the plastic wrap, though, which is tragic. Fifty bucks right there.

Tags: school

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 2nd, 2006 at 12:37 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.