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Thursday,
April 8, 2004 |
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Tests
cause chaos, death
Sean Scogin is a senior advertising/public relations
major from Corpus Christi.
My
heart aches for the losses we suffer daily. Through my
years in school, I have heard it too many times. “My
second cousin’s uncle has died,” says one. “My
car broke down by a biker bar, and they wouldn’t
let me use the telephone until after they beat me,”
says another. My own grandmothers have died more than
16 times each.
Professors, who insist on giving tests to make sure we
“attend class” and are “understanding the
material,” are responsible for many of these untimely
events in students’ lives. These horrible misfortunes
always occur on test days, resulting in a student’s
absence or poor performance. And can you blame them? How
could you sit through or concentrate on a test, a measly
test, w ith death and heartache bearing down upon you?
And what nerve they have, to look down on you, probably
thinking you got too drunk to drive home, and instead
passed out on the curb, only to wake up and find that
you soiled yourself, when in actuality your (noun) (action
verb, past tense), and you couldn’t (study as much
as you needed to/show up to take the test) [Pick One].
The data correlates with my assertion. In 2003, 1.4 million
grandmothers and grandfathers died on the TCU campus (according
to the Purple Poll, which is a scientifically accurate
and well-respected research tool). That is an outrageous
number of people to be dying yearly because of selfish
professors and their “tests of doom.” According
to Milford Swagger, the opinion co-editor of The Sniff,
an even greater number of flat tires and engine problems
plagued many students, and as a result, were unable to
attend their tests. Dogs, cats and other beloved household
pets died as a consequence of testing, causing students
to score well below what they should have.
Professors need to stop this barbaric practice. You would
think, after several years of seeing these misfortunes,
professors would wise up and realize they are causing
these disasters.
I propose doing away with tests altogether, and replacing
this harmful and inhumane system with something far less
damaging. I propose professors start judging us not on
the material in the lecture notes or in the books, but
on the material of our feelings. If we feel good, we get
an A+. And if we feel bad because our grandmother died
(for real), F…+ (shame on them for asking us in the
first place).
With this system in place, I feel confidant that students
would feel more comfortable in their classes. Students
would not have to worry about distracting themselves with
studying. There would be no stress of midterms or long
hours studying for dreaded finals. The student body could
focus on what is really important in college: getting
wasted and playing X-Box.
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