Finals exams/tests are for losers... :P (LONG rant) (1 Viewer)

[NickSo]

[rant]
Dagnabbit! So i got my finals in a week... after you hear what classes and how many finals i have to take, you'd probably think I'm whining too much for too little...
Anyways, I got my finals in a week from today, and argh, its not studying for it thats killing me, but just looking foreward to taking the damned tests.
For me, im relatively lucky, in that i only have three exams to take (Some people have like 5! ): Math, English, Bio.
Math is okay, but what sucks is, I HAVE FORGOTTEN EVERYTHING FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR. Reason one why final exams are for losers. You've been tested throughout the year, why the hell should we need to do it again?! How do they expect us to wade through a years' worth of notes, page by page full of the same 10 numbers, and various symbols to figure out how to do ONE freakin kind of problem?! I just spent an hour frustrated on how to do one simple-looking question, but i TOTALLY forgot how to graph it! So im sitting there ripping my hair out coz i SHOULD know how to do it, but it was so long ago. (BTW, im getting 93% in math right now, so dont think im forgetful or one of those ppl who dont know how to do math well)
English. Reason number two why final exams are for losers. This is stupid to do testing on, because for some stuff, its either you get it or dont. Some people absolutely cannot dig deep enough to find the 'underlying' message in some poem or short (liars!) stories, while others can see it right between the lines. And THEN they expect us to write about a peice of writing. Some of these stories/topics are just so stupid. I took this Standardized Test (LPI) required for some universities, and all the stupid essay topics were so dumb... "What was your best, and worst journey?", "What do you think of public parks and what do you do with them?" (i wrote a freakin 5 paragraph essay on what i do in PARKS! wtf... hell i still passed, im happy) etc. Im just afraid that the english final will have some stupid short story or poem like that. Hopefully not. Another thing that sucks is that you cant really STUDY for this... :frowning:
Biology. Oh.. My.. God.. This is the final im most freaked on. Bio is a CRAM CRAM CRAM sort of subject. The only way i'll do good is read, read, write, read, write, etc. Im determined to get a B (right now im a super high C+ almost B). Studying from the textbook is a bitch, and i've got like 12 chapters to write notes on and after that, read them.
What the crap, this is stupid... And then, after school ends, four days later I go to Academic Summer School for Bio12.. Woohoo... Suffering 6 weeks of hell is better than prolonging the torture to a full school year...
Thats it, im gonna kill some nazis in Medal of Honor and Castle Wolfenstein to release some agression, then back to studying tonight
[/rant]
Edit: hey cool, they got special rant lettering!

 

[Jeffrey Noel]

Hehe....just wait until college. Those finals may be your only grades for those courses! Now those classes suck!! BIG TIME!

 

[MikeAlletto]

What really sucks is if you are a bad test taker. I always did horrible on tests, but I learned a lot in the classes, I just couldn't take those tests very well at all. Just remember all you gotta do is get through the classes in high school to get into a good college. Then learn as much as you can. Once you get a job it won't matter at all what your grades were.

 

[Brian W. Ralston]

Well Nick,
I am going to say something that you probably don't want to hear,but here it goes

You've been tested throughout the year, why the hell should we need to do it again?!

If you have learned what you should have learned throughout the year...then taking a final exam should not be terribly difficult.
Finals are a good way to wrap up the end of the class and make sure students are leaving their class with the knowledge expected from studying the material. Also....the ability to perform under pressure will go a long way in life...not just in school. I know they suck....but the process makes you a stronger and more educated individual in the long run.
Best of Luck!

 

[Gui A]

I used to go to a high school in Toronto called Mary Ward.
It used what was called a Direction2000 program for its curriculum.
Essentially, the way it works is each course is split up into 20 units, which you get to work at your own pace, taking however many days you thought you needed to get all the skills down and take an end of unit test. sometimes, there would be no test, just keep going to the next unit. You could also make your own daily schedule, and could spend half a day or 10 minutes working on a course. There were guidelines as to how many days a unit should take (8 days), but were largely ignored. It was possible to finish the 5 years of high school in only 4... or 6.
Anyway, another plus of the D2000 program was that in grades 9-12 (but not OAC), if you finished the 20 units by a certain date (like 3-4 weeks before the end of the non-semestered year), and finished with an average of above 80%, you did not have to take the Final Exam!
It was hell trying to meet that last deadline, and most times, had to choose a course in which you didn't want to take that Final, since it couldn't be done for all courses... Of course, the smart people with excellent organizational skills didn't need to worry about this, but I wasn't one of them.
But, in the end, the system beat the crap out of me, and I had to change schools. This one was a regular school, and had to take the exams.
I remember one OAC Algebra exam... I knew I had blown the course even before the exam had started.
So I kept a journal. and amazingly, I found it in the garage last week...
9:00 received exam.
9:04 attempted first question.
9:11 stared blankly at test.
9:24 stared blankly at test yet again. (Unless something else is written, that's what I'll be doing.
9:26 drew diagram. worth: 1 mark. (if correct)
9:28 these questions look easy. I wish I knew how to do them.
9:30 calculated what I need to pass the course. need 52 marks. I have 7.
9:35 · · · / - - - / · · ·
9:39 Hmmm... i think i just rewrote the question.
9:41 how do you get a one from 2 zeroes?? maybe if i crossed vectored my mark.
9:47 hooray for diagrams!
9:51 8 marks.
And I kept that up for the whole 90 minutes I was stuck there. A polished (and funnier) version of the journal got published in the school paper.
So Nick, keep in mind: It could be worse.

 

[PatrickM]

Nick, if you think these finals are bad wait until you go to University. Its a big leap in difficulty so enjoy these finals while you can.

Patrick

 

[Justin Lane]

As echoed already enjoy your finals in High School because they only get worse come college. For alot of classes the mid-term and final are your only grades for the term.

Instead of doing well on a final to increase your grade or keep it the same in a class, you have to do well just to pass the class.

J

 

[Dustin B]

You better not get into med or engineering in college Nick :p)

My brother was in electrical engineering for two years. The first year was 7 classes a term, all with heavily weighted finals (couple 100% finals). Less than 50% of first years make it to second year at our engineering school. He made it to second, didn't get through second and is now in an animation school (run by a guy who was an animator on the toy soldiers in Toy Story) top of his class and loving it.

I'm not sure if I'm remembering right, but I do believe another friend of mine who got into med had 8 finals in a one week period at the end of his first year.

 

[Bill Slack]

Just wing it.
I used a single pencil from my sophomore year of HS to my sophomore year of college (yes it was mechanical, no I didn't use a lead re-fill!)
It's actually pretty amusing looking through my notebooks. They tend to have a few notes from the first day or two of classes, then a bit of doodles. And then are blank for the rest.
I eventually started buying a very small single notebook and using it for all my classes for a year. I still couldn't fill a thing!
Yeah, some teachers and profs. are anal and want you to attempt to remember pointless details, but try to avoid those. I just tried to learn how the prof. tested and kept up in the book.
I didn't exactly ace my through everything, but I did pretty well. More importantly, I actually did learn, a lot more than most of my classmates, I think. While I might have got a B and the super-note-taker person got an A, I actually have understanding of the material, rather than short-term retention of a semester worth of notes.
Still, come finals I would cram a bit and run through the side notes and chapter notes in any book, and look up stuff on the net for clarification. I didn't have that good of a memory.
The most notes I ever took was for my intermediate statistics class (the last class of my college career.) First off, the book barely related to what we actually did, and if I didn't write it down I just became mesmerized with the beautiful and aggravating girl sitting next to me.
You'll survive. And while your parents might hate me (though shockingly, mine didn't when I said this): So what if you get a C+? Coast your way to a C+ rather than a B if it'll keep you saner in the long run. You'll be a happier person for it, and it will have no effect on you. Doing it all the time is bad practice though, so pick your spots.

 

[andrew markworthy]

As a professor, all I can say is - at least you don't have to mark the work.

Still, it's worth it for our magnificent salaries and the opportunity to know that there are generations of people grateful for the effort we put in.

 

[teapot2001]

Nick, that text almost blinded me!
I don't remember ever studying much for finals in high school.
For math, all the finals were multiple-choice. I, therefore, didn't study much, only skimming the examples at each section of the book.
I wasn't really doing well in Bio, so I just gave up for the final and was satisfied with receiving a B.
We never had a final exam in English, it was more of a presentation. As a freshman, I taught the class how to make fried rice. The next year, I made a pop-up children's book of Huckleberry Finn. My friends and I made a 30-minute movie of 1984 in my junior year. As a senior, I took the AP exam in May, and then the teacher allowed us to do anything we wanted in class for a month.
I agree that college finals are harder most of the time. A few times, you might be given an open-book, multiple-choice final that lasts 20 minutes.
~T

 

[John Spencer]

Finals are for winners!
Failing finals is for losers!

 

[NickSo]

whooooooooooooooooo!!! IM done!!! im done im done!!! yaaaaaaaaaayy!!!