There's got to be a better way to do this. (If you have any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment. But I suspect it's the usual 'hey, you're doing this oddly, it's gonna be weird' thing, so I'm just going to talk. Or rant. Either way.)
This week is finals (and I really should be studying for my chemistry exam right now, but here I am anyway), and yesterday - Monday - were my physics and math exams. Leaving aside the academics and focusing just on the physical logistics, physics wasn't too bad, but math was nasty.
It's a discrete math class, so we had to do lots of proofs. Which means lots of writing, which means (a) ow that hurts, and more importantly (since (a) can be solved with ibuprofen and hot water), (b) holy crap, I hope my test is legible. I really do. I wonder what the graders do if they get a test that seems okay but is tricky to read?
Last year - my freshman year - I used scribing for one physics exam. It's a pain in the ass, because you're trying to communicate equations in spoken English, and that's just irritating. You really need to write it if you want to communicate quickly. Even with extended time, it's annoying. And there's no real way to know ahead of time how much writing a given exam will take, so whether or not you want a scribe is debatable. Plus, there's the extra pressure of having someone watch you while you take the exam. This is probably irrational, but it makes me feel even more stupid than exams usually do.
Ideally, I'd use LaTeX and just type it, but that takes extra time (which I can get, if I'm requesting accommodations, but in a three hour exam ... yargh), on top of which I'm not solid enough with LaTeX to do an exam without a reference - for symbols, if not for commands!
Tentative plan for next semester: I'm going to request a scribe for my 3 non-humanities classes, and make it clear to the scribe up front that they are a backup. Then I'm going to do everything twice: once (doing my own writing) to actually do the problem, and once (having the scribe write) to get a legible copy. I suspect that will work better than my system last year of trying to do both at the same time, and probably better than this year's system of just hoping it comes out neatly.
Fortunately, of the two exams I have left, one shouldn't require much writing, and the other I can use my laptop for. Thank goodness I only have two more to go, then home for the summer!
This week is finals (and I really should be studying for my chemistry exam right now, but here I am anyway), and yesterday - Monday - were my physics and math exams. Leaving aside the academics and focusing just on the physical logistics, physics wasn't too bad, but math was nasty.
It's a discrete math class, so we had to do lots of proofs. Which means lots of writing, which means (a) ow that hurts, and more importantly (since (a) can be solved with ibuprofen and hot water), (b) holy crap, I hope my test is legible. I really do. I wonder what the graders do if they get a test that seems okay but is tricky to read?
Last year - my freshman year - I used scribing for one physics exam. It's a pain in the ass, because you're trying to communicate equations in spoken English, and that's just irritating. You really need to write it if you want to communicate quickly. Even with extended time, it's annoying. And there's no real way to know ahead of time how much writing a given exam will take, so whether or not you want a scribe is debatable. Plus, there's the extra pressure of having someone watch you while you take the exam. This is probably irrational, but it makes me feel even more stupid than exams usually do.
Ideally, I'd use LaTeX and just type it, but that takes extra time (which I can get, if I'm requesting accommodations, but in a three hour exam ... yargh), on top of which I'm not solid enough with LaTeX to do an exam without a reference - for symbols, if not for commands!
Tentative plan for next semester: I'm going to request a scribe for my 3 non-humanities classes, and make it clear to the scribe up front that they are a backup. Then I'm going to do everything twice: once (doing my own writing) to actually do the problem, and once (having the scribe write) to get a legible copy. I suspect that will work better than my system last year of trying to do both at the same time, and probably better than this year's system of just hoping it comes out neatly.
Fortunately, of the two exams I have left, one shouldn't require much writing, and the other I can use my laptop for. Thank goodness I only have two more to go, then home for the summer!
posted by ismith at 2:34 AM
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