Studies

Some of you know I mark exam papers for a Higher subject.
There are very strict rules governing what you can and cannot write on an individual's exam paper - i.e. you can't write any words at all!! You use certain lines and symbols to indicate omissions, small errors and gross blunders. This is in complete contrast to my own papers I received back last week from a year ago - the word "random" and "I don't think so" featured heavily......

One year ago exactly I went through a number of stages to skip Year 1 of a degree in theology. I did work really hard but only for a short period of time (mid August to mid Sept) as summer is my busiest time job-wise. I guess I could have spent more time preparing but then it would have been in May and I would have forgotten it all (my memory is like a sieve).

I've had an embarrassed giggle at some of the comments on my scripts
Here's a selection: -
"very shallow" "no evidence of knowledge" "uninformed" and (my personal favourite) - "not pass". (whatever happened to the word FAIL?)

However, now that I re-read the answers I wrote under exam conditions, I am absolutely mortified at the complete tripe I wrote. What changed in the intervening week between the first exam and the resit was that I spent one hour in the local coffee shop with a friend who, without knowing what I had written, knew where I had gone wrong, because he knew me and he knew the style of writing I would use. He helped me change tremendously in that one hour meeting by going over the Grenz chapters and pointing out the slant I would have to take. I will never be a theologian but at least I have managed a basic grasp of some topics. And the resit one week later had "good" on it!

Apparently I tend towards the "Yoda" approach of sentence structure as this same marker highlights a paragraph in an essay a year later and comments "confused it seems". I don't really understand what "slow logic" means though.

This time last year I really enjoyed the mission studies essay I had to do and although the comment "random thinking" was also appended to this piece of work it was good enough to pass which is good enough for me, as I got a lot out of the reading I undertook for this. I'd rather be random than....errrr.....

On the positive note, I was delighted to read that I had achieved a "good pass" in Old Testament Studies. Again, I crammed for this in a month but this is the subject I am about to pick up again next week so I am looking forward to an area where I may have a little more ability than belief and thought. I studied archaeology for two years at university and one year of that was biblical archaeology. I can't help but wonder if this might help me a little in the class this year.