“A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam”
- George Carlin
For everyone an Exam is something to loathe, hate, be afraid of etc, etc. But in COEP especially with my batch [COEP Computers 2009], exams have gone past all feelings of fear, anxiety, hate et all. If an exam was Saddam Hussein, then we are George Bush [maybe vice versa, depending on whether we do well in the exam or not]
When any normal University student comes for an exam, he [I'm writing "he" for convenience instead of "he/she", no offense to women] knows about them at least a week or more in advance, we don't. He gives a fixed number of exams every semester, we don't have that liberty. He knows the syllabus on which the paper will be based on, we don't. He knows what the format of the paper will be, we don't. And yet we survive!
Our Mid-sem exams were based on syllabus for which a text book is yet to be published [or maybe if they assemble all our answer booklets they can make a new textbook for it]. It exercised our brains, as we faced each question, we wondered first which Unit it could possibly belong to and then we eliminated the options one by one. The best suited option was chosen and then what started was not an engineering answer, but more of a composition ;)
Since relative grading started in COEP, we have given so many exams that I've stopped counting. There are class tests, surprise tests, seminars, case studies, dumb internal Orals; each of them are taken randomly, at times innocent students just walk into the lab and to their horror they realize a "Viva" is on.
Let me corroborate this with some evidence -
1.
When any normal University student comes for exams, he knows about them at least a week or more in advance, we don't. -
The date 8th April 2008
The venue DBMS Lab :
We were waiting to give our CN viva, which was scheduled to start at 2:30 pm but it was 3:30 and our batch was to start after at least 2 hrs more. We suddenly get a mail saying, "You will have your ALL Oral on April 9th at 2:30 pm. All of you should be present [yeah right, as if someone's gonna dare to bunk his own Viva]"
Imagine the mental condition of a student who as it is, in anticipation of the CN Viva [which by the way was taken by one of the most screwing Externals of all time] is about to consider choosing one of the 3, Suicide, Murder or a simple resignation from Engineering; suddenly has to grapple with the thought of another Viva for which he/she is not at all prepared.
2.
He gives a fixed number of exams every semester, we don't have that liberty.
We have no idea how many exams we will be giving in a semester, it could be anything from 15 to 25. It's really weird!
3.
He knows the syllabus on which the paper will be based on, we don't.
I will narrate the incident of this semester's MMC Mid-sem paper, we had 3 Units for the exams, obviously no one had done all 3 damn well; but the entire paper was totally based on 80386 [a crappy, obsolete Intel Microprocessor, which we have to know everything about, for a reason no one knows]. Imagine the plight of the guy who had left it for options.
4.
He knows what the format of the paper will be, we don't.
A day before the CN class test, a girl happened to ask the Prof, what the format will be; subjective or objective. His answer "
Kahihi aso, tumhala dyava lagel" which roughly translates to "Whatever it is, you'll just have to give it!"
These my friends are the sort of statements that I assure you can be said only by Profs in COEP, for whom Relative grading has become an excuse to torture the students. For example, a Prof has threatened us all -2 marks in a class test in SE. When told that the situation of many students in SE is very precarious, her prompt reply was "
Relative aahey naa, mag kaye farak padnar" which means "It is relative grading, what difference does it make" ;)
And yet students in COEP continue to lead non-violent lives. I, having written this long post about exams in COEP, will now get back to studying; for yet another exam!
