One exam down, two more to go. Today was the English exam, which was mostly an Essay, although there were also 30 Multiple Choice questions. Easy, mostly. Got to the essay and received an unpleasant surprise. We were to make our own Thesis statement on the spot, and that's not that hard. However we were attacked by a Bible Verse in our exam, and we had to formulate a thesis around that for a comparison essay. Let me give you the work load, as well as the time frame. The exam is 2 hours long, and the MC questions likely will take 10 minutes or so, depending on your use of the English Language and memory for things you've read.
Then comes the essay. It's very structured, meaning it has to go:
- General Opening statement or hook.
- Incorporation of the authors/books
- 3 General argument summaries (Of which we were only using one in this essay, but needed to formulate 3 anyway)
- Thesis Statement.
Now, take that, and then include the fact that our thesis needs to roll with the idea of "Let the person among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone" and it kind of throws a wrench into the works. Free thought is halted and we have to adapt our arguments into a three clause thesis which will work with that biblical statement. So, as it was decided in class a few weeks before the exam, the perfect 2nd clause is "problems continue to arise", which I'm sure the majority of the class used in this essay.
Next up is the argument paragraph, which needs to span all three clauses for each book, and then write a paragraph comparing and contrasting an English King and an Afghany Boy. Now, as a reminder of the time, this likely took you 20 mins to hammer out your points and arguments, leaving you with an hour and a half to write a several page, formal, coherant essay. (Can you tell I ran out of time?)
English is a terrible subject to inflict on people in school.
In other news, wankers cram-- I mean Writer's Cramp all round!
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