There was a teacher who gave a 1-item test to his students. Knowing that their exam only consists of 1 item to be answered, the students felt relieved. But to their expectation, the exam was extremely difficult. The item that needs to be answered is a calculus problem, a type of problem which the students still haven't mastered yet. To add to their frustration, the teacher said that the exam should have been finished in only fifteen minutes. Many of the students felt discouraged and decided to fail the test. For them, it was reasonable. They would still fail if they tried to answer the test, they would also be stressed for trying to solve the problem. As the examination approaches its end, more and more students have stopped answering the exam. There are some students who still answer the exam, so the teacher decided to give them an extension of 30 minutes, which is the same duration as the whole exam. The students who stopped already did not complain anymore as they might need to answer the exam again along with those who are still not giving up. Fifteen minutes have passed and the students left are still answering, but this time, the professor gathered their answer sheets and checked it. None of them got the correct answer, but the professor noticed that their solutions to the complex problem were done correctly. The teacher was amazed at the effort exerted by the students and decided to give them a passing score. That was the moment when the students complained, the students who passed were given extension for answering the exam; they also got passing score. For them, it was unfair. After that, the teacher announced to the students: "The objective of the exam is to test your willingness to try to find a solution to a problem regardless of the constraints and the limitations you have. What all of you did was fail the exam because it is impossible to accomplish. These students passed because they did not look on the impossibility of the problem to be answered, they looked on the certainty of the existence of its solution." The teacher added, "the problems when you become older is harder than the question I gave. Unlike the questions that I gave you, you cannot easily get away from the problems that you will have when become older. If you chose to not solve these kind of problems, you will find yourself doing the same thing at some point in your life and realize that you are not doing any progress in your life." Exams are meant to be hard, not because it are made to make people fail. They are made to be hard to prepare students for the world outside their academic life.
