EXAM STRESS!!!!!!!

[Angrist]

Sorry, just have to do something useless before I can go back to learning for statistics again. Man, do I hate that course... :(

[Bond]

Hey, I hate my Microeconomics class too. We should be friends!

[Angrist]

I thought we already were! :love:

I keep thinking: if all the 'stupid' people can pass it, why shouldn't I?? I'm good at math, but this is just so confusing... Anyway, I feel better now. We're allowed to take 2 pages of self-written notes with us, so that helps. Oh, it's also an open-book exam.

[Jason1]

Yea, I took stats. It sucked. I also took Microeconomics. That sucked as well.

Currently, my most hated course is Cost Accounting.

[gekko]

I hate my Linear Algebra course. Let's all be friends!

[GameMaster]

I have an orientation in 7 hours and 45 minutes. Its a little stress.

[Angrist]

Ok, I just got back from my exam. It was hard. Well, not harder than expected... The questions also mentioned the amount of points you could get from them, so I did some counting and I had between 45 and 55 points. If all of those are correct answers, my grade will be between 5.5 and 6.5, 5.5 will mean I passed it.

Soooooo now I'm just hoping I answered them right and have at least 45 points.

[manasecret]

When I was in Malta doing a year abroad, I found out that European universities are hard as hell, much much MUCH harder than Tulane University. But it wasn't like I learned more than I did at home, in fact I learned less. Because it wasn't the material that was hard, the material is pretty much the same. It was the format of the classes that was horrendously, overbearingly difficult.

Let me explain. At the University of Malta, there was no homework, no tests, nothing at ALL throughout the whole course being graded for the whole semester. All there was was a big humongous final at the end that counted for your entire grade in the course. That means if you f'ed up the final, you were screwed.

I hate this format. Yes, I'm used to the final exam counting for the majority of the grade. But without homework -- or bare minimum without mid-term tests -- there is no surefire way to know if you're keeping up with the course. Plus, as I think everyone knows, it's quite easy to mess up one exam even if you know your stuff -- you feel sick, you had a couple major brain farts, anything can mess it up. Your grade for the course shouldn't entirely ride on the results of one big humongous exam at the end. It's unfair.

For the easier classes this format was no big deal. Italian, Prob/Stat to some extent, etc. But for the engineering classes, it was damn near impossible to pass. There's an argument that maybe they're trying to cull the herd of the ones who don't really want to be there, but making the format hard is not a true test of your ability. The difficulty should be in the material, which as I said is no different than what you learn anywhere else.

I've heard that most American universities used to run their courses this way, and maybe some still do. But I think there's a good reason they changed.

Up there I generalized that Malta University = all European universities, which I don't know if that's true or not. How does your university run, Angrist?

Oh, and did I mention there were no textbooks? You know those things you reference to learn from when you realize the professor is terrible at teaching? Yeah, none of those. All you had were lectures and the lousy professor's notes to rely on. Oh, and you had to go get your own copies of the notes from the copy center. Bringing notes was too lowly of a task for the professor to do.

[jeepnut]

I thought we already were! :love:

I keep thinking: if all the 'stupid' people can pass it, why shouldn't I?? I'm good at math, but this is just so confusing... Anyway, I feel better now. We're allowed to take 2 pages of self-written notes with us, so that helps. Oh, it's also an open-book exam.

That's because stats isn't real math.

[Angrist]

True, but it's largely based on it... Anyway, I just think I didn't get enough practice.

About my university (http://www.wur.nl/UK/)... It mostly depends on the course. I've had ones where all we had was one exam at the end of 2 months, but most courses also require you to write an essay or do some group work on a case study.
All courses I followed had some form of literature. Mostly printed collections of articles and/or notes, but also a lot of books.
But homework? Sure, there's always some stuff to keep up with, they usually want you to read articles before the lecture, but nobody ever checks if you did your 'homework'.

The general view here is that if you want to do an academic level, you're supposed to have a certain level of discipline. You're not kids anymore.

[Bond]

Oh yeah. 97.77 percentile on my Microeconomics midterm.

[The Germanator]

We don't have typical midterms here at Bennington, but we have sometimes difficult mid-term papers and projects...Have a 10 page psychology research paper due on Monday...It's gonna suck..I was supposed to get 20 subjects to participate but so far have only six...Kinda screwed.

[Angrist]

I'll participate if it's possible online. I actually interviewed 2 out of 5 people online for an assignment (with 3 others, so 20 participants). Our report got re-interpreted by our supervisor, he published it and it became this article: http://www.informaworld.com/index/782021902.pdf

Too bad the journal only accepted authors with scientific titles, or else we would have been listed as co-authors. After all, we did most of the research/interpretation.

Edit: I think I screwed up the statistics exam. The answers are now available online and it doesn't look too good for me.

[Dylflon]

It's people like you guys that make me happy I'm taking Film.

Go Fine Arts!

[manasecret]

Yeah I'll help out. With Germy's research that is.

Angrist:

I agree at the academic level you shouldn't be treated as kids, so I can understand homework being optional. But homework should at least be offered and the answers eventually passed out if requested.

Now let me be clear, I'm speaking from an engineering course point of view here. As my best professor liked to say, you have to "play the piano" if you really want to learn engineering concepts. Which is to say, you have to practice. Which means homework, or 'problem sets' since 'home'work may not be quite the right term, is required.

You can sit in a math or science class and watch the lecturer work out problems forever, and it may make complete sense and follow a logical path in your mind as you watch him work it out. But until you do it for yourself and work out the problems in your own mind -- until you play the piano, -- it simply won't stick. Even the smartest people I know have to do this for the complicated engineering concepts (i.e. anything past V=IR or other relatively simply concepts) -- I have never met anyone who learns without playing the piano.

I'm not knocking the non-science classes. They are much more conceptual than problem-solving, so working out problems isn't really necessary. If all you had to do was know the concepts of engineering, which there are 'intro' classes like that, then playing the piano is much less important.

[Angrist]

Well, for the kind of courses you mean, we almost always have practice lessons and exercises. Like with introduction statistics, there was homework, I just never made it, I practiced example exams. Didn't really work though. :(

But overall I'm taking a lot more socially oriented courses, which ask for a different setup.