"Your time is up everyone. Stop writing"
The invigilator supervising one of the exams I wrote then said this from the middle of the hall, while a lot of people obeyed the instructions he gave as they dropped their pens around once. I look at the questions I'm yet to answer and I felt strangely dissatisfied. I had spent a lot of time studying for that four unit course, but my revision and everything I could easily explain to my friend over the plate of beans has easily absorbed suddenly become difficult for me to arrange on paper under a specific time given for the exam.
What I remember was not the score I got eventually. It was a particular question about something I totally understand well in class and even explained it to someone a week before the exam. I could even explain it in my dream, draw the things it contains, write about it, correct someone who tries to omite a step. But during the exam, it was the question I wanted to answer last, but when I eventually wanted to attend to it, I could only remember half of it this time. I knew is so well before but during the deal day, I could only remember half. When the result for that course was eventually released, the score next to my name was high but not what I'd planned for.
Before that moment, I have always questioned wgse exactly and why we really do exams and for what measures. Knowledge is involved no doubt, we have to recall some concepts, follow the instructions, have an organized thoughts and give all we can write down to answer the questions within the tone frame for that course.
Those things are just the real abilities, and I am not going to be honest here if I say exam is for nothing or it measures nothing. Someone who is always reading and reading, studying, preparing and who understands the materials for the exam can easily reproduce it even when under pressure or when it has demonstrated something.
But when it comes to our intelligence, I will say it it much more wider than that. In my little experience, I have seen people who were ordinary students back then, and today, they are who everyone now runs to provide solutions to something. With just real life problem, enough material and time, and they are different people entirely. They can just look at something that others have been looking at with no solution, and in just few minutes, they have already provided the solution and what next. Nobody has given them a paper and pencil test to tick from A, B, C, D, ,E option.
And at this stage of my life, I totally understand why people always says it's good to have a certificate. And tgarbis because an employer, school or an organisation needs to know that someone has passed through a certain level of training and they are qualified ti carry out some task. And where the problem always starts from is when the evidence of knowing something becomes more important than the ability to implement it.
When it comes to real life, nobody gives us thirty minutes, one hour to two hours in a silent room and tells us to give the solution before the real life problem appears. In most cases, all we need to just finished ask questions, huge those ideas some test, make mistakes and try again.
Exam is still something i take serious. But what I do not agree with and will never agree with is that the score I get or appears on my papers contains it shows everything that I know. Some knowledges are just meant to be shown on papers. And others comes alive when real life matters kicks in and when something needs to be built, improved or explained.
And during that exam, I think of that answer that I was unable to remember probably because a lot more was flowing through my mind at that time because only lost access to it ttat moment in the exam hall..but In real life, I still have not forgotten the knowledge. And that is the difference.
Thank you for reading.
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