Flashes of Panic

I just finished the first exam of the summer course. It’s still “open” for another three hours, but I’m still too far behind on rest to want to stay up past 11.

This, in my opinion, is the big win of the online course, and this professor has given online exams in “real” courses I’ve taken with him as well. I tend to test well, assuming I understand the material of the course, and as a result when I need to sit for an exam, I wind up sailing through the exam, going back and checking everything twice because I’ll feel like an idiot handing it in that quickly, and still being the first or second person to hand it in, usually in less than half the time allotted. It’s almost not worth the drive to Westfield.

Online, I don’t need to make the drive; I fill in the answers, save, and submit from home, in my own chair, with the music on and a drink on the desk. (I suppose it is theoretically possible to have a beer and take an exam, but I’m not sure I want to put that one into practice. Plus, there’s no beer in the fridge.) Low-stress environment. All I need to worry about is the network going on the blink, or the cat erasing my answers by walking over the keyboard. (He’s good at performing little keyboard miracles like that.) And when I’m done, hey, I’m already home.

By the way, a web form is a great test booklet; multiple choice etc. works well with web widgets, and even if a multi-line text input isn’t the world’s best text editor, at least you can cut and paste.

One of these days, my ability to handwrite will have become completely vestigal…

Now playing: Spinning from I’m on my way (EP) by Rich Price