“I decided we would do an oral exam* because it’s a great way to see if people have actually learned anything from my course and aren’t just parroting notes. Because I can ask them to elaborate on their answers.”
Yeah and it’s also a great way to get otherwise good students to go blank because it isn’t possible to absorb every bit of complex information you spent 12 weeks rushing through, Barbara.
This “gotcha” style teaching fucking pisses me off. There is no time in the real world people are not going to be able to look up their notes. Fuck, half the time I’ll ask a professor something and they’ll be like “I’ll have to look that up later and get back to you.” Why? BECAUSE THEY’RE HUMAN AND THATS HOW BRAINS ARE.
This type of teaching only favours students that already had experience with the subject beforehand and freaks with amazing memories. This kind of understanding of the material only comes from experience and repetition, something that the traditional 12 weeks of rushed lectures/labs that discard each topic quickly to fit all of them in don’t do.
I fucking hate how much I am going into debt to be taught only the vaguest concepts but doing most of the teaching myself in my own time. Education under capitalism is a joke.
*An oral exam is an exam where instead of answering questions in a quiet room on paper, you have to answer questions on a live video call with your instructor.
I don’t have any kind of diagnosis, but I have some mild suspicions, and I have basically this problem on a shorter time scale at work.
A significant part of my job duties is taking data from a bunch of tools and departments and writing up an email that lays that data out in a way that a stupid executive can understand. The emails only need to go out two or three times a day, which is good because they take about an hour to write up normally. Since that’s only 2 to 3 hours of work, it should be easily doable. I cannot force myself to start working on one of these emails until about 20 minutes before it’s due, at which point I rush through the process as quickly as possible.
They’re usually like 20 to 30 minutes late, but my management thinks mine are really thorough so I think I’ve been a little shielded from consequences.
I work faster under pressure, and I think I work better under pressure also, but I also hate pressure. It’s so goddamn stressful. I wish I just had a force of will to make myself start these fuckin things on time.
My life.
It can be used to your advantage if you are like me. Basically leave things to the last minute knowing that the pressure will make you finish and finish well. That frees up loads of time to do whatever. The trick is to not waste that time and/or use it to rest (because working under pressure is exhausting), depending on what’s going on.
I’m about a decade into my career so I’m pretty relaxed about the pressure now, but it was pretty bad at uni and starting out.
Being able to work quickly and make good decisions is a great skill, you just have to find something that isn’t like manufacturing human wood chippers.
The trick is to find a job that is all fast paced urgent bullshit and have enough autonomy that no one bothers you during the downtime. It’s also helpful because if something’s so urgent people are calling you for five minutes updates, you get continual little motivational bumps.
This has been my experience too. Good luck finding such a job if you have a degree outside IT, though. Doubly if it’s a degree involving actually touching physical reality.