Last Exam

I had my last exam today — in the afternoon. It went very well! I meant, it DID!!!! Gosh, it was one of the best exams I’ve had! The exam itself was open book. Well, normally I don’t like open book exams. Though I hate memorising SOOO much, I’d still prefer closed book ones. In IT, closed book exams mean most of the questions are quite straight forward, e.g. define this, define that, give example of this, which one is correct, etc. Sometimes there are a few analysis questions, but they don’t matter that much; meaning: they’re not tricky. When it comes to open book exams, there’d usually be so many analysis and tricky questions. Basically you have to fully understand the concept and theories to answer most of them. During the exam, you don’t have that much time to read through your notes again — although, yes, you’re allowed to bring as many notes and books as you want.

But that particular exam that I just had was so different! The exam was held for 2 hours. It had a total of 16 questions — so we only had 7.5 minutes to do each questions. I don’t know how exams at Indonesian universities are conducted, but at UQ there’s a 10-minutes perusal time prior to exam, where you can open and read your exam paper. It depends on the course you’re taking — the rule is that: either you’re allowed to write the answers straight away on the answer sheet, or you’re only allowed to write on the scrap paper/exam paper - but NOT the answer sheet, or you’re not allowed to write anything; even holding a pen! For this exam, I was allowed to write on a provided scrap paper only.

I had some strategies set for this exam. Basically I read through ALL of the exam questions during the perusal and made sure I understood them very well — note that during this 10-minutes time, the lecturer of the related course must be present at the examination room to answer some queries from students about the exam questions (e.g. if they’re not clear); once the perusal time ends, they’ll usually go out of the room and are nowhere to be found . Once I was assured that I understood all the questions, I marked few of the questions that I had no clue about. I searched through all the notes I brought in that day, read through them, and marked the pages that had the answers or at least some explanations related to the exam questions. After that, I read through each question one more time and made sure that I remember where I could find the answer to that particular question, e.g. on which lecture notes, sections, pages, etc. So that’s basically what I did during the perusal time.

And you know what? I was quite surprised that most of the questions were NOT tricky at all!! You can basically find them in the lecture notes and tutorial questions. Most of the questions were very similar to the last year’s exam paper (and I had all the answers of that paper written down). Honestly, you don’t need to understand the concept and theories to answer this year’s exam questions. All you need to do was to COPY AND PASTE and perhaps, write AT THE HIGHEST SPEED!! Hahaha. I wrote, wrote, and wrote until my hand was numb!!! I tried to write as fast as I could, knowing how short the time was. For the first one hour, all I did were: read the question, find the topic on my notes, and do copy-and-pasting (For the time being, I skipped all the questions that require me to think a bit more). I didn’t need to modify the sentence that’s written on the notes, nor did I need to think further more about the answer! Hahahaha. They’re just EXACTLY THE SAME! Because most of the questions were about writing the definitions, giving some examples (which are clearly stated on the lecture notes), describing how some applications work, and all those “factual” answers. As long as you knew where to find the answer, then you’d be fine!

After I finished copy-and-pasting (by this time, my right hand had already became numb), I started to relax a bit, read through the questions that I hadn’t answered, and do some analysing. And, to my surprise, I managed to finish the paper 20 minutes before the exam ended. I used the remaining time to check through all my answers, make sure I get them all correct and complete, and add some more statements to make them look more perfect. LOL. I didn’t expect that the exam was gonna be THAT simple! Seriously. I walked out of the examination room smiling to everyone hahahaha. Most of my friends with whom I did study group were very happy and told me about their “copy and paste” stories . Well, some people told me that they couldn’t manage to answer one question. But I’m sure everyone will get a quite good mark for this paper! Hehehe.

This exam made my day!!! I went back home; joyful, excited, and should I say I was a bit hyper? Hahaha. I tried to hide my feeling though, coz my housemate Jenny hasn’t finished her exams yet (and my roommate Mayu has gone to Japan 4 days ago for holidays). But I just couldn’t do it!! LOL. Then I rented some DVDs. I watched my long awaited movie, Déjà Vu, starred by my most favourite actor — Denzel Washington! Hehehe. As usual, Denzel rocks!!! Hff, it’s been so long since the last time I rented DVDs.

Quotes from the movie that I particularly like:

That’s destiny. A bomb has a destiny, a predetermined fate set by the hand of its creator, and anyone who tries to alter that destiny will be destroyed. Anyone who tries to stop it from happening will cause it to happen, and that’s what you don’t understand. We’re not here to coexist. I’m here to win. So you’d better have some divine intervention, buddy. You’re gonna need it.

Finally, I finished all my exams. Now is the time to wait for my grades to come out. Oh I’m nervous. Happy Holiday!!! (sorry for everyone who hasn’t finished exams yet, but… really, keep fighting! )

*Notice that I didn’t write the word “easy” to describe about my last exam… because… you know… karma! LOL.