What Assessments Do To You

Having written my last Internals/Assessment exam today, a reflection on how these little tests changed our lives.

IT MAKES YOU SAY THE SAME THING. AGAIN AND AGAIN.

Ever had your friend tell you, "You've already told us the story a thousand times before"? It comes from the habit of writing the same thing in different formats for a single question. Like "It is very simple to implement i.e. the complexity of the implementation is rather low".

IT MAKES YOU COMPLICATE EVEN SIMPLE THINGS.

Most of us hate to write answers that are very clear and to the point. Especially when you have no idea what that point. So you end up writing stuff like "A line, a straight one at that, without any argument will furnish you with the shortest possible distance between two points provided that it is possible to draw a line between the fore mentioned points in the first place" (aka a line gives the shortest distance between two points). This habit continues even when you speak normally to anyone.

IT MAKES YOU THINK YOU CAN LEARN ANYTHING.

With almost negligible preparation for the tests, we still end up passing the exam. Most of the time at least. This only makes us to think that we somehow have the ability to learn almost anything. It makes us believe we can learn everything there is to learn about rockets in a night's study!

IT MAKES YOU BELIEVE IN TRUE INSPIRATION.

Ever thought on seeing a particularly nasty question "Wtf is that question about?". And after twenty minutes you realized you just got through five pages of answers out of nowhere. Five pages easy on a topic you had no idea about. That, my friends is called true inspiration.

IT MAKES YOU REALIZE SOMETHINGS ARE SIMPLY NOT WORTH DOING.

We have written a total of 49*3 internals so far. Now there is a certain someone in my class who just grinds through every material for every internal exams. The grinder spends atleast six hours for each of those internals. That is a total of 882 hours spent studying for these tests. A friend of mine spends at the maximum 30 minutes for these tests meaning he has spent a total of 74 hours for his study. So the grinder has spent nearly 34 FULL DAYS more on only studying.
Both of them will leave college dual placed in Aricent and TCS.

R.I.P internal exams :)

5 comments:

2much2ask said...

RIP Internals. Gonna miss them :(

VICHU said...

nice post :)
Just that you dont say the same thing in a different way da. Sonnatha appadiye achadicha mathiri solluva :) Its ok dear.
You shud play "Whats Sai's next word" sometime :) nice game

VICHU said...

Readers, I m the guy mentioned in the last paragraph. (I cudnt resist flaunting this :D)

Surya said...

@VICHU : U r d guy :) nd who is dat grinder?? ;) :P

Sai said...

@Ani - We all will :)

@Vishnu - Thanks :) And think you might win that game every time :D

@Surya - Come on, we all know who the grinder is.