I've been dealing with final exams for many years now. Many meaning 15. In those 15 years, I've either been taking or giving final exams, two or three times per year. For a couple of painful quarters in grad school I actually was taking and giving final exams in the same week. Not fun.
Everyone who has been through some college can share painful experiences with taking finals. Fewer people can share the painful experience of giving a final. For those of you who have not yet experienced giving a final, I thought I would explain some of the pain.
1. Creating a good final takes a huge amount of time. I spend a lot more time writing a final than I used to spend studying for a final. I spent several hours a day for two weeks designing just the first draft of the final for my 800+ person class. I spent pretty much a whole week and some change designing the final for my graduate class. And this designing was all happening while I was still teaching and grading and holding office hours during the middle of the semester. Contrast that to my student experience. As a student, I usually didn't start studying for finals until after classes were completely over (wish I could wait that long as the instructor), and then I only got a day or so to prepare before the exam. And it was almost always enough, if I had kept up on the homework. Not so for writing the final.
2. I spend a *lot* more time grading the exam than students spend taking the exam. For example, this Monday I'll spend the entire day grading one single problem on that 800+ person class. And it is b.o.r.i.n.g. Boring! Soooo Tedious! The worst problems to grade are the ones where the student has no clue, but they fill the entire space with pseudo-relevant trivia, so I have to look over it carefully several times in all different orders to see if there is anything there that could possibly deserve even a single point. That, my friends, is one reason why so many people are against the idea of giving partial credit.
3. Proctoring the exam is also mind-numbingly boring. While the students get that thrill of adrenaline, and can write the answers and leave when they feel like it, I have to arrive early and stay late. I spend those three hours patrolling the aisles, watching eyeballs to ensure they don't stray, checking for loose papers, and answering the same questions repeatedly. While the students can get up and leave anytime, I have to hang around until the bitter end, waiting for those two students who are done, but just hoping against hope that the final-exam-fairy will appear and magically give them the last few answers. In 15 years, the final-exam-fairy has yet to appear in any of my finals. But still they wait.
4. And yet, I know dear reader that you have no sympathy for me and the eternal boredom that faces me while proctoring, or the misery of grading on Monday. All your sympathies lie with my poor students. And honestly, I think I agree with you. In spite of all the time it takes to create, grade, and proctor those miserable finals, at this time of year I am SO THANKFUL! that I am giving the finals and not taking them. Thank goodness I have finished taking finals forever!
Happy finals week to all and to all a good night.
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4 comments:
I just finished grading the research papers. I LOVED this post, as I have to start writing the exams next week for our finals.
I LOVED this line about Boring, Boring, Boring. If I read one more paper about how America needs health care, I'm going to be sick. How's that for a nice irony? I spend more time on the plagiarizer's papers than they do. I caught three this time in this class. They think I'm dumb and don't know how to use Google. I'm actually quite good at that and I tell them, but they smile and think I'm dumb and won't check.
Great post.
No sympathy at all. You evil, sinister fiend. Partial credit made the difference between me being a surgeon and emptying tampon dispensers for a living.
Avram had a class that he was the TA for, and also in (it was the first year the major was offered, so the most qualified TA's hadn't taken this class yet). So he both helped write the tests, and also took them. Avram spent forever writing questions for each test (which the teacher then used for about a quarter of the total questions) - way longer then he spent studying for tests in general in undergrad.
I've often have had teachers who've bemoaned grading finals over Christmas Break - I can understand why so many opt for multiple choice instead of essays - long answer for that finals.
Good luck with your finals days. Don't they have TA's for you that can grade 800 tests? Or are you too junior in the department? (Or are the TA's not good enough?)
during one summer of law school I had to grade a stack of papers for the write-on competition to my journal. It was torture! Oh so tedious and I was oh so judgmental even though I was only a year removed where those students were I felt they were pretty much all dumb for missing the obvious. Good thing I never saw my graded paper for that!
I think I would love teaching but the grading papers part certainly looks like the worst of it.
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