I’ve been doing exams.
It was pretty stressful but also very rewarding. I had to drive over to Churchill and sit in a room with about 500 (mostly) much younger people. Theresa and the kids were very supportive, letting me pretty much disappear into the bedroom for three weeks. I wasn’t getting a lot of sleep, and when I was asleep I was mostly dreaming answers to trial papers.
The exams actually finished about a week ago. I’ve just been resting since then.
I think philosophy was pretty ok. It was 2 hours and 40% of the total mark. If I didn’t do so well it perhaps doesn’t matter as I was on a pretty good average going in. Java programming I was quite tense about, but overall, I’m hopeful that I did ok and I’d be surprised if I didn’t at least pass. It was 3 hours and a hurdle requirement of 40% applies, so if I bombed out that whole subject is shot – that goes for the other IT exams too. Doing a programming exam with paper and pencil was quite odd. No compiler errors to work from!
The Computer systems I was worried about, to be honest, but I think the exam was o.k. I was on an average of about 90% going in, but honestly thought that I could have got less than 40%. There just seemed to be so many little bitty things to know. Prepping for the exam I started to see the big picture – the notes and lectures were sequenced sensibly – but the course still seemed to be a list of things that you really ought to know. As it was I thought it was a fair, reasonably predictable paper and I’d hope for a decent grade.
IT in organisations I was also a bit worried about. There was nothing really hard to understand in it, but a lot to remember, and I’d never really felt that I connected with the subject. The exam was again fair and I thought pretty straightforward. I was only looking for a pass but I could have done alright.
Anyway, I’ll find out how I went in a couple of weeks, and I’ll make sure (dear reader) that you are informed right away.