A Day in the Life of a University Student: Of Midterms and Doctor Who

The title of this post may seem just a little ridiculous. After all, how are midterms and doctor who related? Does the doctor write midterms? Are there midterms based on doctor who? While both of those would be extremely epic, I’m afraid that they also don’t happen. Basically, the only reason why midterms and doctor who are co-existing in this post is that today I wrote midterms, and then I watched doctor who. ‘nouf said.

As for the midterms, I think I did fairly well. My psych one was hard, but I had studied so much that I knew most of the stuff. It’ll be awhile before I get the marks back, but I’m hoping for at least 90%. (NOTE: I ended up with a 95) Then my poetry one was actually a lot easier than I had been expecting. If I don’t get a hundred it’ll be high nineties (I got 104%, there was a bonus question). Afterwards I talked to a bunch of my classmates and they all said that they thought they did pretty well, too. All in all, my midterms went fairly well. Sorry if this seems like I'm bragging, but since my first essay didn't go near as well as I had hoped, it's nice to be getting these high marks in other subjects. I feel like I've redeemed myself.

Now comes the really cool part of the post, where I rant for ten minutes about how good looking David Tennant is…. no. While I probably could rant for a lot longer than ten minutes about David Tennant, what I really want to tell you about is my extremely strange way of watching movies with a friend while she happens to me back on PEI and I’m in Ontario (approximately 18 hours drive, in case you don’t know your Canadian geography.)

What basically happened is that we started using apple’s Facetime on my iPad. She sat in her living room with an iPod, while I pointed my iPad at my laptop screen. Then I played Doctor Who on my laptop. This meant that we could both watch it at the same time (though I doubt that her picture was exactly the best quality) and talk about it while we watched. Seriously, it felt almost as if we were really sitting on the couch together watching a movie.

Maybe this sounds a little stupid to you. It certainly isn’t something you hear of people doing regularly. But personally, I really enjoyed it. I like watching shows and movies on my own, but it’s even more fun when you have someone to discus it with. I’m the kind of person who likes to talk during movies, pointing out random trivia or just exclaiming “Oh my goodness, this is so sad!” (For anyone who knows their Doctor Who, we were watching the end of season two. Sadness extreme.) Because of this, it was a lot of fun to just sit and watch a movie with my friend, even if she was a thousand miles away.

In other related (happy) news, my last exam for this semester is December 15^th, which means that in seven weeks I should be home! Don’t get me wrong, I love it here, but I can’t wait to see my family and my PEI friends again. 

A Day in the Life of a University Student: Bad Bus Luck

Today was… how shall I put it… interesting. There were some very high points, some very low points and some just plain random points. Some of it has to do with being a writer, a lot with being a university student, some with being a Doctor Who fan, and everything with being me. Since there’s just so much to tell about today, I’ve decided to break this post up into three parts. Here is number one, Bad Bus Luck.

First of all, you should know that I had two midterms today. One was a psych midterm worth 20%, the other was a poetry test worth 15%. I studied like crazy for the psych midterm since I knew it was going to be hard. The poetry one, not so much. Anyways, I had been preparing for today for a long time, had gotten all my work done last night really early so that I was in bed by ten. I woke up feeling all refreshed and ready to write the tests.

Then, before I left, I sat down on my bed to pray and ask God for help on my midterms. However, I spent just a little longer on it than I had intended, so when I opened my eyes it was already 8:29, and my bus usually gets to its stop between 8:29 and 8:31. I kinda freaked out at this, so I dashed downstairs, threw my lunch in my bag, grabbed my coat, shoved my shoes on, exploded out the door and ran down to the path to the street… only to see the bus pulling away from the stop.

This is kind of a catastrophe. It’s now 8:30, and my exam starts at 9:30. It takes me approximately an hour and eight minutes to walk to King’s. If I ran I could probably make it, but there’s no way I want to show up at my exam panting from running for an hour. The other option is to sit around and see if there’s another bus I could catch. There’s two busses that go by my place, the one I usually take and another one that normally comes before it. I could wait around and see if the other bus is late, or I could start running.

At this point, I have a brilliant idea. My bus has to go through a whole subdivision before coming out again at the main road. If I run really fast, maybe I can make it to the intersection before the bus, and so I’ll catch it there. So I cross the street and start running with my laptop bag swinging around my waist and my coat billowing out.

Just then, the second bus pulls up to the stop just behind me. Great. If I had just waited a minute longer I could have gotten on that. But there’s absolutely no use waiting here now, so I just keep running, then slow down to a walk because I’m really out of shape. About five to ten minutes later I arrive at the intersection, only to see the second bus there at the other side. The light’s red, so I can’t cross over. As soon as the light changes, the bus pulls away.

It’s now 8:40. The next bus won’t get here for another half hour. If I wait for that, then I’ll miss my transfer at main campus and end up at King’s about five minutes late for the exam. Unless I start walking, there’s no way I’ll make it in time.

So I start walking. I speed-walk through another subdivision, glancing longingly at all the cars that pass, until I come up to another major road that’s serviced by about four or five different busses. I take a well deserved break, and five minutes later another bus shows up going east. I grab that, ride it for about two stops, then get off, dash across an intersection and take a north going bus up to campus. Once there, I wait for about ten minutes until a shuttle comes, which takes me to King’s. Arrival time, 9:18.

Despite missing my bus and ending up taking three different busses and walking way too far, I got to campus only about twenty minutes later than I usually do. In the end, it didn’t work out that badly. It just doesn't make sense; I nearly missed my exam because I was praying for help on the exam. How ironic is that?

The Problem of Evaluation

One question that a lot of people asked me when I was homeschooled was, ‘Do you get grades?’ For most subjects I’d have to say no. I simply worked through the material, learned it and moved on. Even for Science, which did come with tests, I’d learn all the material and then take the test. Partly because of this, my marks were all above 95%, even on a subject which wasn’t my strong suit.

Now, before you accuse me of cheating, I want you to think for a second about the purpose of school. Why does the government force children ages 7-16 (I believe those are the compulsory ages in Canada, sorry if I’m wrong) to go to school? To educate them. To let them learn. Getting a 95% on an exam is not the purpose of education; it is only the method that teachers use to evaluate their student’s learning.

Apply this to my Science tests. The test mark isn’t proof that I’m so much smarter than a public school kid who got an 80%. Maybe if I had been in public school I’d only have earned a 70%. The point is not the mark. What counts is that I learned the material.

The problem with our education system is that grades very often don’t reflect the actual knowledge of the student. I recently earned a relatively low mark on a history midterm. I’m not going to post the mark here, but let it be said that it’s the lowest mark I’ve ever received and I was not happy with it. I had studied really hard for the test and I thought I knew the material quite well. I learned a lot. Even though the mark was still a pass, it was a letdown. Then, when I went to see the professor I learned that my poor mark was actually one of the better ones.

After hearing this, I started thinking about what the mark really meant. The professor was evaluating my learning through 25 multiple choice questions. It’s likely that this evaluation was wrong and I actually deserve a better grade. But does it matter? A mark is someone else’s idea of how much I learned. The evaluation can be accurate or it could be way off, but either way, I know how much I learned. The purpose of schooling is to learn. Yes, I’m upset because of the low mark, but I know that in the long run that doesn’t matter. I’ve learned. I’ve grown. And that’s what’s important to me.