Exams at Melbourne are easily the most unecessarily nerve-racking experience I can think of. Forget the fact that I was grossly underprepared for this controls exam, for a minute, and just picture this: over two thousand university students rushing into an enormous (and freezing cold) open exhibition hall--so large, in fact, this is where they played basketball when the olympics were in Melbourne in 1956. Everyone has an assigned seat at a tiny desk lined up in rows. There are "invigilators," (the intense quasi-police force of old retired people they hire to proctor the exams) everywhere directing us, complaining that my see-through blue pencil case was against regulations, etc.
The first fifteen minutes are reading time. As soon as they let you into the room and you rush to your seat, you are allowed to read the exam but not write. Miraculously, the correct exam ended up at each person's desk. Then an incomprehensible voice on some PA somewhere says begin, and you hear the unmistakable sound of two thousand people picking up their pencils. The next three hours will probably suck.
The exam was really hard. Much harder than the previous year's exam the professor gave us to practice (figures, he's an ass). It was essentially a three-hour mind pillage; my brain was rendered pudding. When there are fifteen minutes left, the hawk-like invigilators stop circling us poor students and line up at the front of the room between each row. When the clock hits the hour, they immediately start walking down the aisles and pull away all the papers. Then you're free to go. When I left, despite having convinced myself that I certainly failed, I was relieved just to get out of that room.
Taking an exam in a really difficult subject is bad enough when you're not completely intimidated by your surroundings. Yet again, Australia has made me really appreciate the way things are done at Princeton: quiet, relaxing exam rooms, sans-proctor per the honor code.
Well, at least it's over. One down, two to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment