05 March 2003 00:29
so i took a senior exit exam today. yeah. i don't know what to say.actually, i have a lot to say. see, i started to say it after i finished, by writing a paragraph and a half beside the answer column on the scantron. but i was kindly stopped by a kindly proctor who kindly asked me to erase it while kindly standing by to make sure that i did it. it took me about four minutes to erase it (i took my time, i had 15 minutes to kill), but seriously, it was written with a number two lead pencil, the oldfashioned kind that you can never erase all the way. then she kindly helped me wipe the substantial amount of erase dust off the table and kindly told me that it's often tempting to write sarcastic "little things" on the answer sheet, but that i was now "clean in the eyes of God." i thought she was serious, schooby thinks she was lightly jesting, but God usually isn't something that faculty/staff at a christian university jest about. oh, and she told me i could write on the test book all i wanted. well i knew that, i didn't write on the test book because they throw it away and nobody ever sees it. the answer sheet however, somebody probably feeds that into a machine. unless they plop the stack in and it feeds automatically (which is likely). however, she kindly told me that the answer sheet wouldn't read if i wrote on it, so i kindly erased it, even though i knew (and i mean this in the kindest possible way) that she was full of it.
enough of that, what about did i write? well, this was a test on the effectiveness of the general education that letu provides. so they ask you general questions on social sciences, grammar, and math. very general, with a lot of analysis. they would give a paragraph out of some book and have you answer questions like "which of the following statements, if true, would most undermine the above paragraph?" my issue was with the subject material of the paragraphs. these are standardised tests (by EST, the same guys that do the SAT's i think), so they were of course very pro-evolution. i lit into that for a little, then started to get warmed up on the issue of equality. i was just getting started on that one when my efforts of rebellion were mercilessly squashed by a higher authority, the same higher authority that was insulting my intelligence with this test. eh, back to equality. so about three of these passages dealt with equality. one on women's sufferage, one on a liberal female novelist, and another one on racism (that one was sort of combined with a passage by thomas jefferson on the way that science was going to abolish class distinction). i was mostly annoyed for being preached at by feminazis and evolutionists/athiest/scientismists (i made that one up, like it?), but i wasn't complaining about it (i'm not supposed to be complaining, remember?). instead i was lightly mocking them (in the kindest possible way of course) for their cluelessness. come on, they're preaching to the choir here. they're testing generation y, we grew up in the nineties, we are the postmodern generation, we are positively oozing with tolerance. it's the testmakers' generation that has the racial/sexist issues, not us. and then they have the gall to preach at us about equality (this test was nothing short of propoganda) and then ask us what our gender and race were all in the space of ten minutes. i (still in petty rebellion mode) put my race as "other" without filling in the blank beside it.
for the second part of the test, we were given a set of bible questions. this happened after my episode with the kindly proctor. the bible questions helped redeem the university's position on this test in my view. there was a vivid contrast between those questions and the standardized questions.
Standardized: If machine A produces 300 units per hour and machine B produces 450, and a company has three machines of type A and one of B, how many units will they produce in an hour? (actual question. of the dozen or so math questions, i sratched in the margins on two of them, and i could have gotten by without the paper even then)
Bible: After the Exodus, the Israelites went to blank. After staying there for a year they went to blank and tried to enter the land of Canaan. Failing, God sent them to the blank and they wandered there for 40years in preparation for entering the promised land. (actual question. the answers (multiple choice) were lists, only two started with sinai, they were sinai, kadesh, plains of moab vs sinai, plains of moab, kadesh. so it was easy to answer, but you still had to konw what you were talking about.)
this test was designed to test the effectiviness of our general education program. i know however, that my score on the test would not have changed appreciably between before and after college, if i had taken it before starting here. (with the exception of the bible, it's only thanks to dr. hummell that i have any idea where kadesh is :). was rather). logically following then, our gen ed program is a failure. well, i might have to agree on the subject of chemestry, but otherwise i disagree with the test results. i can integrate a formula now, i have a better appreciation for F. Scott Fitzgerald, i can probably write papers at least marginally better (my hs was pretty tough in that area), i definately know the bible better. therefore, logically following, the test is bogus. well shoot, i could have told you that a long time ago. oh well, it's only an hour and a half of my life, it's not like this school hasn't wasted huge chunks of my life before (but we won't go there). however, thanks to the school, and in the words of a fellow test-mate, thanks for making me feel like a high schooler again. goodness knows i behaved like one (hey, since they didn't trust us enough to allow us to bring reading materials, i had to occupy myself somehow, and stacking pencils seemed like a fun way of doing it). how does it go, "treat a person like he's worthless (stupid) and he'll come to believe he's worthless (stupid)".
the sad thing is that this test which i'm sure i got an excellent score on is probably very rough for many graduating studetns in the us. there are students graduating from college that don't know how to spell, can't write correctly, can't solve 5x+2y=15 for x, can't understand logically that if a=b and b=c then a=c. (btw, for the smart alecks among my audience, i may not spell studetns correctly, but i at least know that i could spell it correctly if i so desired. or rather, were not too lazy to type properly). i would propose that these grad tests be tests to failure instead of tests to pass. insteadof having half of the graduating class of march 03 get between 95 and 100%, make it so that the genious that everybody dislikes gets a 90% and the jocks get a 5% (if they get lucky and pick a pattern that coincides with the correct answers). then i would feel like i'd actually taken a test. the grades don't affect us at all, so what does it matter if we have no clue what the answers are to 40% of the questions? then the university would have much more specific and accurate results about the effectiveness of their education.
quote of the day by me: "hopefully i accomplish something before i am called to account for my gross negligence of my education"
anywayze, on to more important things. i heard that free pizza was being served somewehre on campus at 11:30 tonight...
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