Miscellanea Cantabrigiana
Because it’s worth it
Exam term may be unpleasant, says Hugo Gye, but it’s a necessary evil.
Someday, you'll miss this place. Maybe.
Suddenly the UL tea room is a thriving social destination. Freshers lounge on the Backs indulging in strawberries and Schopenhauer. Trips to the pub become a luxuriously guilty pleasure. Yes, exam term has many joys; but for most people these are outweighed by its pains.
Cambridge life is always underpinned by stress, that feeling that you will never work hard enough, never quite complete your to-do list. The exam season distils these emotions into a heady liquor of guilt and regret, forcing even the most indolent student to confront his degree head-on. Most of us are able to accept this as a mildly unpleasant but necessary part of the university experience; for some, however, the pressure gets too much, and this time of year is unfortunately marred by mental health problems.
That exams should provoke emotions ranging from irritation to severe depression is very sad, and the University must keep up its efforts to help students deal with the workload. In the past, colleges, JCRs and even CUSU have had an important part to play in looking after students’ welfare this term.
Some would go still further, and argue that the problem is not people’s response to exams, but the whole system itself. In their view, exams put undue emphasis on only a few hours of writing, encouraging students to dismiss the work done throughout the year and judge themselves solely on the results of the last week of the Easter term. Moreover, they say, the system gives an unfair advantage to those who are somehow ‘good at exams’, or just well-trained, allowing them to shine at the expense of more learned but less polished peers.
Nonetheless, this view is misguided. Being put on the spot encourages you to think quickly and respond to unexpected challenges, rather than the incessant, minute tinkering of the average dissertation. Papers with a broad scope force one to display a broad knowledge of one’s subject, and time restrictions encourage one to communicate that knowledge as succinctly as possible. When we all sit in the same room at the same time with the same questions, we are in the same boat, and the competition on which Cambridge thrives is unleashed.
Naturally, coursework has its value too, allowing the student to explore certain subjects in a much greater depth than is possible in an exam. Yet no-one can pretend that dissertations do not provoke at least much stress as exams, and a greater role for coursework would not reduce the pressure we feel. Besides, an emphasis on the Easter term allows us greater leeway for play as well as work in the other two terms, a leisure which we should not give up lightly.
It is obviously true that people with a knack for taking exams will do better in Tripos than others, but this is not necessarily unfair: after all, the skills required for taking exams – a flexible mind, fast data recall, limpid prose – are useful in every walk of life, and exactly the sort of education which students should be able to take from Cambridge. Exams mirror the urgent, broad yet knotty problems which will confront us many times in our future lives.
We may not like exam season, but that is no reason to abandon exams in toto. They test quick thinking and a broad range of knowledge in a more economical way than is possible with coursework. While exams are stressful for some people, that is because of the high expectations prevalent throughout Cambridge, and nothing could change that without sacrificing quality. If it all gets too much, try and remember that outside this town no-one actually cares what degree you get; or perhaps – though it’s probably too late now – we could try doing some work in Michaelmas and Lent: after all, in my case at least, exam-term troubles are usually of my own making.
Topics: Cambridge, Exams, University
“Papers with a broad scope force one to display a broad knowledge of one’s subject, and time restrictions encourage one to communicate that knowledge as succinctly as possible.”
Are these necessarily goof qualities? Even if they are, do they relate (necessarily) to the life of academe which the University is nominally preparing us for? Or even to the life in the ‘real world’ which awaits most of us?
I think not.
.M.
Exams are an efficient and practical mode of assessment from the University’s point of view, but they’re certainly not the ideal or the most representative mode of assessment available. Particularly in Cambridge the exam system is heavily flawed. There is a University-wide cap on the proportion of any course that can be assessed by coursework, instead of allowing departments to fashion assessment according to the particularities of very different disciplines.
It is a well known fact that men perform better than women at Tripos; a trend which is not found at other Universities in the country. One factor influencing this in the Arts might be the strong stylistic preferences that examiners seem to have for aggressive, daring argumentation. When it comes to exam writing technique, who your supervisor is often determines what style you cultivate, or whether you get any help or advice at all! Given these influences, how could the exams be seen as representative of the real capacity of students?
It is also highly undesireable that people who barely lift a finger the entire year can snap up the highest grades in Easter term simply because the exams take a few short weeks worth of work and revision as a snapshot of your net productivity. That’s hours and hours of labour and diligence that is unrepresented – often misrepresented as a result of this crude measure.
At the very least supervision assignments should count towards grades. This would make the burden of having to do quite so much of it a little less exasperating and pointless. It would also reward investment in your degree.
Exams are arbitrary at best. Its not surprising that they are used far less frequently for postgraduate degrees.