Hell Yeah! Its Exams!

Well, maybe its because I’m a sucker for music or probably because I’m a bit nuts, but I recently had this thought… er… actually my mom had it and she gifted me the thought as a joke and i… haven’t got the joke yet.

My parents and I were having our very quintessentially parents-son talk on how I’m screwing my grades up and why I need to study and stuff. They were telling me to concentrate less on the other stuff and more on studies. Then suddenly my mom popped out a remark that, I had no idea then, would be metamorphosing into a blog.

She said, “You would want music in the exams too, wouldn’t you?”

And I said, “Hey mom, that’s a great idea. They SHOULD ask stuff about music in our exams.”

And my mom wondered, “What a jerk! That was a JOKE. Genius!”

I was able to sense the presence of negative and sarcastic mind at play in my vicinity. I have a gift. But well, that’s a different story altogether. Some other time. Yeah, so I wondered what it would be like to have questions on music, movies, sports and stuff in the exams or at least a few marks of the total allotted to them. Its damn important it is. Music that is. In our lives. Isn’t it?

In our college, we have 60 marks for the end semester exams. Well, out of those 60 marks, say we give 30 marks to the real important stuff. For instance, there should be a question like:

Q (10 marks): Do you know how to play the guitar?

1. Yes. In that case, raise your hand. You’ll be given one. Play Tears in the Rain by Joe Satriani.
2. No. In that case, write the lyrics of All Along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix / one of your originals.

See what I mean? Still 20 marks remain. Those should have questions like:

Q (10 marks): Write a summary of the semifinal match played between Russia and Spain.

Q (10 marks): Write the story of any of your favorite movies with a detailed description of any one scene.

So here it goes. We have 30 marks for the stuff people should really know. And these things will make the exams pretty interesting to take. Imagine walking into rooms and finding people watching movies/matches and playing guitar or singing songs, all this on the exam’s eve. In that respect, I might even want to increase the number of such questions or even better, bring in some more variety. Like:

Q: Suppose you’re trying to solve the Rubik's Cube. And you are stuck with a pattern such as the one given below with the first two layers solved what algorithm would you suggest? Or if you solve by intuition, raise your hand. You’ll be given a cube with a similar pattern on the top layer. Solve it. The pattern is as given below:

Since the above question is a little time consuming and difficult, we might want to allot 15 marks to it.

Fair enough, isn’t it?

And what about books, some may ask. They have an equally important role in our lives. Consequently there should be a few marks for a question or two on books. Like:

Q (10 marks): Give a character gist of strider aka Aragorn of LoTR. Or give a short alternate ending of your choice for the novel Rule of Four (Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason).

That totals to about 55 marks. That leaves us with 5 marks. So what do we do with those 5 marks? Well, don’t you think there should be a question on how things work or the basic mechanisms of stuff we use daily? Here’s one for instance:

Q (5 marks): Explain the basic mechanism of a pendulum clock or explain in brief how to set up a small network connection at your workplace.

Ah! That’s it. We now have a model question paper style. A style which should be adopted in almost every college in India and elsewhere as well. Some may ask stuff. Like:

Q: What about the stuff from the subjects? The ones we study?

A: What subjects?

PS: Any suggestions at making the paper style better?

Damn! Can't get the tongue out of my cheek...