Student Blog: One Semester Down

This year has been so long, painful and exhausting and unfortunately, I'm only halfway done.

On the bright side, I'm halfway done with the year (hopefully next semester will be kinder) and I am halfway through my degree (praying that I pass this semester and next).

I cannot believe how quickly my university career has been flying by. I am so appreciative of the time that I have had on campus with my friends, making memories and all but I will not lie. I pray that I can finish my degree online. I do not want to experience an in person, sit down exam. I have already done a practical which was...

Let's just say, my lecturer was at least five minutes late and I was filmed.

Anyways, I am a huge advocate for having examinations and assessments to move online. I know for certain degrees that does not work but in many cases - cough.cough: humanity degrees, like mine, you write essays anyways so why must we waste time going into a freezing and massively intimidating hall. Why do we have to be timed and then judged on how much we could get out in time. It makes no sense. I need someone to explain to me how the current testing method, measures anything but speed and memory. Timed tests are ludicrous.

Being stressed, under pressure and timed, does not measure your intelligence or capabilities.

So, why is it the go to method of assessment?

To plea my case:

I am doing Linguistics and Journalism.
Two courses that focus heavily on essays. So, how does it make sense for me to be timed, confined and forced to memorize six months worth of knowledge?

Linguistics, is rooted in research and studies. So, writing essays over a week, makes sense.
Journalism, do I need to explain. I will anyways. Journalists have time to write articles, story pitches etc, they can get extensions. Yes, journalists need to be able to adapt and work quickly but how, how do you time journalistic perspective?

I would have never known a world of online summative assessments if it weren't for the pandemic. Hopefully, the pandemic will teach universities that being timed does not work. I will say, degrees such as medicine, pharmacy and accounting. I get the testing their knowledge. They need to actually know specific things.
BUT Humanities?

No, we write essays based off of readings or research.
If anything is taken away from the pandemic, it should be summative assessments is the way to go.
Please and thank you!