If I had the brain of my Professor

After a half of a semester has finished, most lecturers find it necessary to test their students to see how well they have been understanding the covered material thus far. Some students tend to understand quite well resulting in good midterm exam grades while on the other hand, other students tend to have not understood to well.

At this time, the students gets to choose. He or she gets to think! He asks himself, "Am I doing well enough to go on with this class?" She asks herself, "Can I pass this class with a grade like this?" If the answer is yes, the student will most likely continue to attend the class without withdrawing. However, those who have proven that they have not been doing so well will go to the business office, drop the class, and live with a W (standing for withdrawal) on their transcripts.

Now look what I am going to throw at you. Its a serious question. Can we blame students for failing midterm exams and accept them withdrawing or is it sometimes the lecturers fault? My answer is, it can be one or the other, or a combination of both. It can be found if researched upon that most students understand the course material and still fail the midterm exam. This is because either the lecturer may have set a difficult exam which covered material and/or knowledge that wasn't passed down to the students, or the students just refused to study. Come to think of it, I know lecturers who set exams completely different to that of the material that is covered in class. Then, their are those who know nothing, study hard, and at the end of the day, still do not know anything. My sympathy goes to them but, from what I have sometimes seen, they are the set who drop, still attend class, give it a try the next semester, pass, and move on. I encourage students to try over and over again.

Ok! Let's upgrade your life. Pretend you are me for a moment. You were up all last night doing homework and now its 9:45 a.m and you are in your class at Dalhousie Univeristy falling asleep. Then, you here your little grey-haired lecturer say in his low voice, "Don't bother to study for your midterm because you would not pass anyway." What would you do? Become fully awake raise your hand and ask him to repeat what he just said, or return your eyes to the closed position and try to dream like you thought you were doing a moment ago? Well, lots of hands went up. Questions like "Why the hell are we taking a midterm then?" "Why won't you just give us a F and not allow us to waste time?" were asked. The questions were ignored and he followed by saying, "You are allowed one sheet of cheat notes on both sides of the sheet, and you can put on it whatever you want."

Can you believe I spent a week reading and writing cheat notes as fine as I can on my cheat sheet and when exam time came I sat there with all the information I needed and still could of not figure out what I was supposed to do. However, I didn't feel too bad though as the majority of the class got 33.3 % with the leading grade being 45%. With such low grades, different lecturers of the department were asked to do the questions since they can be interpreted in many ways and the exams will be remarked according to the answers and solutions that other lecturers may have came up with.

Do you think you could have passed that test? I think I could have IF I HAD THE BRAIN OF MY PROFESSOR!

Thanks for reading,
Kenwood Carwtright



*This has been written without re-reading or editing. Please do forgive if there exists anyy errors.