Midterms? Say What?
Within two weeks I will have had five exams, two of them technically being midterms. I don’t know if every department got the brilliant idea to have their midterms early this year, but it sure feels like it in my part. Maybe the teachers actually think they are being helpful by giving them to us early, because we will avoid having to take their midterms when everyone else is giving their midterms.
Wrong.
See, the problem is most of my classes don’t do midterms, they do quarterly exams. So all the teachers who pushed forward the midterms have done is set all of my exams AT THE SAME FREAKING TIME. Literally. I’ve taken my Spanish, Anthropology, and Criminology exam already. I have my English exam today, and I have my Psychology Statistics exam (which I honestly don’t give a flaming pile of shit on someone’s doorstop about) sometime in the next five or so days.
More about my English exam. To be honest the class is easier that AP/IB English by light years, but is really rather enjoyable and DeKraai-ish. Dr. Pearson is a great discussion leader, and even if I’m not all that fond of American Lit after the civil war, he makes it interesting. He also gives us fairly easy quizzes and our exam format includes three take home essays (of which I need to finish one more. I swear I’m not procrastinating) and ten quotes where we must identify the story they came from. Overall, most of us think its going to be pretty easy. Most of us except for the philosophy major, that is.
At least I think he’s a philosophy major. This may be a goodtime to note that I am prejudiced against those who study philosophy. In my experience, they believe there is one absolute truth and that they have the proof for it, and build their entire existence around it so much that they become complete assholes if they regard you as any kind of threat to their ideology, and then try and fail you for their course.
But I digress, there is a 40-ish looking man in my English class who told me how much he loves philosophy, and is an infuriating idiot, so I am pretty sure he is an Philosophy Major. Every time Dr. Pearson hands us a quiz or explains the exam, the dummy starts questioning everything Dr. P has said as though he has assigned us some impossible task from which there shall be no return. Again, we had 3 take home essays and 10 quotes. Not that intimidating. He asked stupid questions like “What authors will be on the exam?” after Dr. P had already told us all the authors we discussed in class would be on the exam. It shouldn’t have to be his job to cover the asses of people who never paid attention in class, but by the end Dr. P had giving us a definitive list of every author on the exam, and discussed in detail every aspect of what we should be writing, which most of us knew in the first place.
Of course, the Philosophy Major was still not satisfied and continued to throw smug questions at the teacher until we left. Sitting so near to the 40 year old brat was dangerous, because I almost reached over and strangled him. He tried to recruit me to help him write a study guide for the exam, but I believe it may have finally hit him that I would rather gouge out my eyes with the Heath Anthology of American Literature and call it studying, because he never e-mailed me. Thank god. Because I more than likely would have replied with some form of sarcasm he would not have understand.
I probably should stop stalling and actually finish my last essay. I’m having a bit of trouble with it, because all of the topics overlap so much I don’t want to repeat myself. Oh well. It’s a little fun writing about how early 1900’s America sucked the souls out of immigrants and how women were so depressed and trapped by their gender roles that author’s used it for a showpiece to help enact change. Do I think the author I am writing about actually meant all the symbolism I am gathering from the story? Of course not. Does it make a good essay? Hell yes.