Posted by alexandra_k on June 13, 2015, at 19:03:37
In reply to Re: fear, posted by alexandra_k on April 16, 2015, at 20:21:28
chemistry exam: done.
feels funny. chemistry has been this worry in the back of my mind for the last couple years... done now. i hope i did enough. that's about all i can say, really. the exam felt a lot better than the last test. but i don't know. i felt pretty good about the first test and then was really disappointed in how much i managed to mess up, so will just have to wait and see. i... really don't know.
biology tomorrow. labs turned badly, again. basically lose one grade because of that. labs are... mostly about your ability to extract the appropriate answers from the laboratory demonstrators, feels like. certain things you can do to make that more likely... show them you have done some work before-hand etc etc. but if they decide it is fun for them to steer you wrong, or whatever, then, well, that's the way those go. Make sure we test / reward what it is that we value, oh yes, for sure.
i like the content okay but... mostly about studying for the exam, really. you can know the content but the questions be... odd. oddly phrased. tangential relationship between the questions and the lecture content. i see why people think the textbooks are a waste of time... study for the exam, indeed... Hunt down the answer to those questions as best you can... Go in prepared.
i don't need to do as well as the kids who've been trained up in doing this over the years... but... i still don't know that i can do well enough. you need people to back you, i see. people need to give you permission to try / to succeed / to have any hope in getting out. guess they will only back the people who they think are like them / are one of them etc. makes it more likely they will go back, i guess. means... they might be more likely to back the wrong ones in the first place (the ones who do better in their environment rather than the new one they are supposedly being selected for). I guess that is the point, really, from their perspective.
I've always felt... People were like 'she'll be right' even when I was very specific that I wasn't alright. And then 'oops tee hee' when it turns out that they were wrong - she'll not be alright, indeed. Turns out... The truth of it is... That they simply couldn't care less. Instead of them going 'what a bad fit, indeed, lets try and send her on with our blessings (since she's the child / the one without power / the one we've been charged with looking after / protecting / helping'... Instead of that... I think they'd have been happiest if I'd just have curled up and died, honestly. I wonder where all the Autistic Spectrum Maaori kids are. One doesn't have to look further than cot death, I suppose. If you cringed when people tried to cuddle you... You'd probably have been smothered.
Sigh.
Ugh. Not quite out of there yet...
Things are good. Except for the street kids who've moved into the low cost long term accommodation next door. There is an empty lot with a fence / billboards that keeps the empty lot hidden from the road. There is a side exit out of the accommodation with outdoor stairways up on to the roof etc. Recycle bins out the side etc. So... They party out there... Whooping and squealing and carrying on into the small hours of the morning. Throwing their glass around loudly and living in their... Trash, basically. The ground is all littered with trash for them to sit amongst. You can take them out / get them out. But if you take / get a whole bunch of them all together at the same time them they just sort of bring their sh*t with them.
Like how you defeat the purpose of total immersion overseas experience if you go with a bunch of other people who speak English / are from similar places.
Anyway... I think the culture here is fairly much that exam takes all. Got a C+ for that first law test, I remember, then did really much better in the exam so... Isn't quite this situation now since labs and tests do contribute towards our overall grade... But exams are worth around 50% so... Anyway... Just do the best I can is all I can do. Done Saturday evening next week. Will take a few weeks for things to go through boards of examiners and the like.
No more chemistry. And possibly... After this exam... Just possibly no more biology, too. I like the content... Shame about... Well... I guess you don't know whether things get better in later years without actually doing later years to see... I think... Most of the serious students mostly hate labs... Because they dont' actually teach you how to do anything properly... I think... I think... Because they don't know. Truth be told. So we're left playing the socially gregarious playing lab game...
I see why some of the great scientists did badly at academic science. Dropped out of school, even. I see why people don't care particularly about your grades... Why they don't mind / sort of expect uneven results. Or maybe I'm thinking of arts people who basically left science in disgust (or something)... Who got sick of the uneven grades. Who got sick of playing the 'lets study multi-guess questions over the last few years in order to deduce the correct fairly arbitrary answer' instead of... Maybe... Focusing on learning / understanding the content of the book...
I see why.... The kids think it is work. They've basically... Been trained to work, over the years. Sort of... Dilligently do this and then do that and then do the next thing. Carefully... Without errors. And of course sometimes they do get the opportunity to be creative (likely be berated for how they can only diligently do this and then do that and then do the next thing rather than be creative)...
I see why... The pre-med kids are all like 'do you expect us to learn that?' Because lecturers will throw up seriously detailed diagrams.. Far too many for you to learn... And so you need to know what it is exactly that they expect you to reporoduce / draw from memory for the exam for 10 marks... Or, at least narrow it down to a list of 3 or 4 that are up for grabs so the content is manageable. Or maybe that was just their long winded speel that was only there in a half-hearted attempt to help you narrow down multi-guess question 5 for one mark. And then the lecturers complain that students don't care about the content they only care about their grades. And the students who actually listen to what the lecturers say (focusing on content rather than studying for the exam) are the ones who either don't do well enough in science to continue... Or who don't get into med because they didn't do well enough... Just another case of how the people whose job it is to help you learn... Seem to delight in tricking students. In making them play 'find the content / answer that we have to learn' instead of giving them answers / content and seeing which ones of them can actually learn the most of them... It is just... Sigh.
Sigh.
It is just... The way it's been done. For a number of years. And people do think it is silly, sometimes. But they don't seem to think there is any alternative...
It feels faintly ridiculous. Lottery? That would be unfair. These sort of... random.. arbitrary assessments... I guess they are training us in useful skills? I don't know... Time for a holiday, soon, soon.. I suppose it is about doing your work. Doing the job. WOrking through the exams... Takes time. They are trying to reward the kids who have put in the most time. Not in the big cram before the exam but dilligently over the course of the semester (which is why they cram all our exams all together in the first week of the exam period so you'd likely run out of endurance during the actual exam if you weren't careful to pace yourself).
I suppose it is useful skills that they value. Sigh. Do I really think that clinical assessment skills are so very different from lab skills? Damned people. I just wanna... I dunno... Grow bone in a petrie dish, or something. You'd need to exercise it. I keep thinking about that. How you would exercise bone in a petrie dish... Whether you could get the matrix to form properly... Whether I might need bone plugs in my feet once the screws / the rest of the metal comes out. Heh. I'll build me better feet one day. I swears :-)
I hope I get into med. I think that physiology with the rest of them might be... Insufferable. For me.
Fingers crossed. I guess.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1076978
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20150604/msgs/1079751.html