Ahhh, the pleasures of finals. Squeezing every last drop of memory out of that spherical object we like to call our head. I think teachers and students across the world need to come up with a better way of testing other than test taking.

Ok ok, so maybe some hope and encouragement would be more appropriate rather than criticizing aspects of our current education system. Being in community college right now you see alot of students becoming lack·a·dai·si·cal around finals. Rather than feeling motivated to study for the ‘last drop,’ they give up and becoming content with their 89.99% I know it’s not all JC students who do this, but there sure seems to be an awful lot of them doing it.

Let me paint a mental picture for you. Imagine you have just been chosen as the winner of the Van Claiburn competition. Of course you are going to have to play at least one piece for the final concert. So you finally come up with just the right piece. The Mozart piano concerto. You practice and practice and practice for that concert. Goodness, of course you wouldn’t want to make a fool of yourself in front of that crowd. I think the diiference between studying for a class and preparing for a concert is the audience. Suppose you took your test on an overhead projector, and everyone watching you had the answer sheet and knew instantly when you made a wrong choice. Yeah, that’d be pretty scarry, and you can be sure you’d study your brains out.

SO just like a musician would savor every note of the cadenza and on through till the last chord, you too can savor the test rather than agonize over it. Think of that prize that is set before you. As a musician, you’d be feeling so relieved of all that stress you’d been holding, but then again, you can walk away contented in your performance. Your audience is contented, and everyone walks away winning.

You’ve got an audience, your teachers, You’ve got an even bigger audience, the saints in heaven. While your audience doesn’t cancel their fan club membership if you don’t do so well, they are there to root you on to your maximum potential. And remember, in their eyes, your greatest performance is when you’ve tried your hardest and not when you receive an A. For people like me, it’s comforting to know that you don’t have to get an A. Getting As is about as much a reality for me as going to the moon. So you see, it’s all a matter of perspective.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 9th, 2002 at 9:48 am and is filed under Deep Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.