Thrown into the Final Exam lottery

A bunch of my books for this term.

Something I've wanted to get off my chest for a while: exam writing is a crapshoot.

I think our education system is flawed. For most people I'm sure that exam marks are mostly proportional to amount of studying (or knowledge of the subject). Exams are supposed to test your knowledge of the course material. Well guess what, since exams are timed, they also test your ability to perform. So your mark is now based on knowledge (a fixed value) plus performance (a variable). I have found that my performance varies greatly from day to day. Even while writing, my performance level can decrease significantly, say if I get stressed or frustrated, I'll work slower, or waste time. But sometimes, if I'm having a good exam writing day, I can be as frustrated or stressed as I'll ever be, and I'll still write a good exam. Then other factors get involved, like tiredness, alertness, ADD, dyslexia...

Like I said, a crapshoot. A lottery, a gamble, luck of the draw, a fluke.

So what to do? Well I don't think that because something is flawed that it should be dismantled or drastically changed. For me it's more about understanding that it's about performance. So I'll still pass, because I'm smart enough. I'm smart enough to be middle of the pack in my class. So the system works, the way it was designed. School is about taking a group of people, and making sure that they all learn relatively the same amount (i.e. make sure the class average is between 68-72%). At least that's how it works in Engineering at UW. So the hope for me, and I've already realized this, is that the working world measures my engineering ability based on something more than just my marks.