It’s all part of the Process
For the first time in my university career I filled a whole exam booklet with text.
Now some of you - those involved in arts and the like - may think that this isn’t a strange thing at all. However let’s reflect for a moment: I do engineering, and I am well acquainted with filling exam answer booklet(s) with enough numerical symbols and formulae to, well, fill an exam booklet. But the art of prose is one not often practiced by us engineers; we can write a 20 page report with references and pretty diagrams, but when it comes to writing extraneous text in an exam, well that’s just plain rude.
I agree that for this particular subject (Manufacturing Processes - yes it is as interesting as its name sounds) there were very few formulae and maths-type concepts, but what ever happened to the “short answer” section? When I look through an exam and see words like “Discuss” and “Comment on” it tends to throw me off my game a tad. That’s why they have a special section in lab reports called “Discussion”, so we don’t have to do it anywhere else! Not only that, but they expected diagrams as well… what is the world coming to?
June 17th, 2006 at 12:20 am
Not cool. Not cool at all. How dare they ask of us so much as to put more than 8 words in a sentence. How dare they ask us to describe anything, without the use of our hands and something flexible to demonstrate the resulting displacement. How dare they not let the exam at least be open book with repeated questions. It’s just not on.
Instead, we put our engineering futures in the hands of our clarity of communication, attempting to get the point across and appear to be as knowledgeable as we really are. Describe 4 uses of a flux. Easy, I could describe 5 if you’d like. Descibe 4 uses of a flux on paper in 4 minutes with no time to draw diagrams. Holy smoke, write em down, get the idea across. Bad grammar, who cares? Remember, we use engrish for engineers. Anything goes, as long as it’s legible. To a degree.
And for a degree, and it’s not the only problem. May the words be replaced with numbers. May the children go running and cheering in the streets knowing that the end of the essay or ‘description in detail’ is arrived. May the streets and buildings be painted with the thermodynamic tables, and may somebody work out how turbulence works. Really.
May we have electronic compasses of the drawing variety, never ending and easy to operate click pens that don’t break. May BIC work out that a cylindrical pen is nicer to hold and just as cheap to produce as a hexagonal one. May samosas no longer be always overcooked, sushi be too sticky, burgers be too unhealthy and Nandos be too damn expensive. To eat everyday.
May people talk with clarity, sense, and judgement. And with long pauses in between so that they work out what they want to say before they say it. May arts students learn to get to the point. Sooner. And may the eng and law faculties swap locations. Or at least libraries. And views, toilets, and proximity to good coffee.
May swipe cards no longer split at the magnetic strip, metcards no longer bend, keys resist fatigue fracture and nokias not get cracked screens.
May we all do well in our exams. May Will continue to solve long integrals, and set Q to zero only when its actually an imaginary force. And may we not be required to number pages on assignments that are only 12 pages long, as that’s just silly.
If all this happened. The world would be a better place.
Plausibly.
~SST
June 17th, 2006 at 12:41 am
Wow, that’s more like a sermon than a comment, I’m beginning to wonder who says more on this website, SST or me!
There are a few points in the meandering sermon that I do agree with, but maybe I should take to truncating comments, unless they’re poems…
June 17th, 2006 at 1:54 am
That is a fair sermon. Now after his settled himself down, SST would like to pass around the collection plate while the children read out a nice-warm-your-heart-prayer-of-peice!
Dear Lord,
To be fair: we had it coming. Who would have guessed that after 3 years of not practicing any form of written communication that you would be required to actually use the other side of your brain and descibe something without aide of diagrams? How else are engineers able to break the chains of chin-glish and learn to bulls**t their way through a grant, or a presentation, or a way of getting more money for something that is cheaper. This subject isn’t the work of the devil named Smith, more a god send.
We shall look to the hevens and thank you for the ability to break out wrists within 2 hours as we write aimlessly in the hope of keeping a sad, lonely lecturer busy just that little longer while we are all having fun at the clyde on holiday.
When next we are subjected to group oral assignment we shall praise you that someone out their decided it was important for australian engineers to be able to construct a proper sentance that firstly makes sense, secondly means something, thirdly has a proper use of verbs and is in english!
Lord hear us!
June 17th, 2006 at 9:13 am
Maybe this is a new Eng faculty idea. The CS department seem to have taken to requesting pages of descriptions of processes too, more so this year than I’ve come across before. And I’ve been here a while now. My hand took several days to recover.
June 17th, 2006 at 10:46 am
The times they are a-changing eh GeM? For those of us playing at home, exactly how long have you been in the CS department? And does CS really count as engineering? I mean really!
June 17th, 2006 at 11:17 am
Come gather round people wherever you roam…
Ok, well this is my fourth and final year in my wonderful department. Not because I’ve failed anything (yes i’m defensive about that): because I did a Diploma of Languages (+1 year to any undergrad). For the ppl playing @ home : do one, they’re great.
I’m the first to admit Comp Sci doesn’t strictly count as Engineering, but I we deserve an “honorary Eng” title. We have approximately the same male-female ratio (maybe even lower), we too do maths (the theoretical kind, ick), department staff stress we will graduate without communication skills, and we love beer.
We’re part of your faculty kids, whether you like it or not!
June 18th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
where did all the posts go?
June 18th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
SST and aRnold had a disagreement, and I thought it best that both comments be removed, save us all some trouble. How goes study for Thermo?
June 18th, 2006 at 8:53 pm
um study… yeah. Went out for a breakfasty lunch in Brunswick st. Then happened upon a shoe store working, man eating blogger who shall remain nameless…
Thermo study is going, well… remind me why im here again?
June 18th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
I have heard tales of this man eating blogger who masquerades as a shoe store worker in order to identify her next victim, I hope you aren’t the next target Mr macguyver!
If thermo doesn’t kill me, control will, and then put several nails in my coffin, before rigor mortis even sets in.
June 18th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger will!
*Insert random rocky quote which sounds like english and italian run at high speed through a blender then run at half speed which can only be delivered by sly stallone*
And I’d like to put out a big sorry to SST, my constant faux pa need to watched quiet closely from now on, but that’s no excuse, what i said was out of line.