We Hates the End of Winter Term

Ooooh, we hates it with a passion. We wants it dead, we would walk it through the fiery halls of Mordor to see it writhe and perish in agony. And we hates making the final exam with equal fury, because making the final exam is a torture for us that few understand.

Making final exams, making final weeks of notes, making students who are suddenly disgruntled, less so. And making it seem like it's easy, when it isn't. How do you test the knowledge you were supposedly imparting over the course of a term, in a 35-question multiple choice final? If you're a student, especially if you're among the conspiracy-theorists that have sprung up in this class, then you might think that the profs gather together at night, dressed in black cloaks, chanting around a fire over which the sacrificial (animal of choice) roasts. Then, if you have a particularly vivid imagination, the profs gather their most hated memories from when they were students, and inflict them upon you: we remember our own profs who laughed with derision over our failures to pick up on a simple concept, our mistaking Na for N when calculating a molecular weight, mixing up ethyl methyl propyl. So we inflict it on you. We think back, we consider the best methods to ask the most obscure questions that test none of your general chemical knowledge, and then we put it into an exam. Then we spread the dust from bones of former students who perished during the Great Exam Debacle of '53 over the final we have wrought, we all spit on it, we slit our palms open and press our hands into it, and declare it done. Done, and set forth to torture another semester of hapless students.

Right. Because we've got nothing better to fucking do.

Really. We're not that conniving. Or we really don't care that much. Take your pick.

Let me set it straight: if you've been a student or you are one, I can assure you that the conscientious profs spend many hours putting together the final exam, set so as to both test your knowledge as well as push you a bit. We're not interested in the obscure, for that you can always consult a book, and there's no point in testing it. We meet to discuss the final (because three of us currently teach this course, we all work to set the exam) but we definitely don't bother with the cackling and the robes. We do start to giggle sometimes, but only because we're exhausted too.

Obviously I'm working on the final exam this weekend--I'm making more than half of it. And I need notes for Monday, a tutorial for Sunday (tomorrow), we need to go to Ikea today to look at kitchen islands, and I need more wine, damnit. Where is my valet? Hmph. Seems to be off for the weekend, curse him. Just the children and Hub are here, and none of them seem bent on serving me.