EXAMS. ON

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 811, 4 November 1929, Page 14

EXAMS. ON

Varsity Students' Pulses Rather Low UNDERGRADUATES AT WORK The Auckland University College is the most depressing building in the city today. It will be so for the next fortnight. Why? \Vell, anyone will tell you that the saddest sight on earth is an undergraduate working: and today and for the next 13 days, 1,245 of them will be driving their weary pens over miles of paper in a desperate effort to snatch a university degree, or some such sine qua non of academic infallibility. The annual degree examinations of that ethereal and yet austere body, the University of New Zealand have set in. Now. for an undergraduate to be seen at work is a highly abnormal situation, for in the ordinary course of events the only people who do any real work at a University College are: (a) The professors. (b) The Hongi Club; and (e) The students’ social committee. Temporarily, real life at the University College is dead. The much-abused piano is silent, or else muffled out of respect for those working next door. Flies assemble on the deserted card table, and only in the intervals between papers does the ping-pong room ring with the hearty laughter of care-free students. In the common room the victims of the examinations stand in little groups discussing past failures or future prospects. Over all prevails an academic hush.

A cynic once remarked that “at Oxford one learns to waste time gracefully.” He might have applied the same to universities the world over, for human nature being w T hat it is, the average student is a procrastinating fellow. As an economist would say, he prefers present to future satisfaction. Most of the work at a university,

one feels, is done in the three weeks or so before the examination sets in. Up to then the unceasing round of social functions, dances, debates and society meetings, interspersed with occasional attendance at faculty lectures, holds sway. When the last-minute rush sets in, many students find it profitable to absent themselves from lectures, holding, no doubt, that the time can be spent more profitably elsewhere "cramming.” SUGGESTED INNOVATIONS But to the great army of 'last-minute workers, comes the maddening sight of one or two, men carrying overweighted heads and spectacles, who find time to indulge in a brief “let up” before exams., secure in the knowledge of having done a year’s solid work. They are the most hated of men, but the number of those who betray the precepts of a rigid form of trade unionism is always small. Most students live up to the spirit of the student song, “Gaudeamus igitur.” It is at this time of the year, more than any other that students feel justified in pouring out venom on exams, and examiners—a system which irks them so. Yet it is a curious thing that as soon as a student manages to get the mythical letters B.A. or B.Sc. tacked on to his name, he carries a grudge no longer. One Criticism of New Zealand’s educational system is that the very prevalence of examinations is proof of the imperfections of the system. Sir Michael Sadler, the prominent English educationalist, sees much evil as well as much good in the examination system* He even suspects that it is doing more harm to the English mind than drink. He suggests some modifications, one of them being that in most subjects the candidate should have his reference books in the examination room with him. At the Auckland University College today many sighed in vain for that privilege. Well indeed may the geological student sigh for a text book when questioned on the general strut such organisms as ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurus, pleurotomaria, cvathophyllum. and a hundred other -uses and -urns. CHIMING CLOCKS But as things are at present, candidates have but a pen, paper, a set of questions and three hours to work in, with the chiming of city clocks in the distance to remind them that time and tide wait for no man. And then, once an hour in comes the majesty of the library clock: “Through all this hour, Lord be my guide, and by Thy power no foot shall slide.” Most candidates need a lot of guiding through the traps set by examiners, set not always to find out what they know, but what they don’t know. For the moment dead languages come to life again with stark reality for those who have (or more unfortunately still have not) delved into Latin and Greek classics for the past year. Reams and reams will be ground out at feverish haste on “Pomposo” Johnson, Burke, Gibbon, Goldsmith, Collins, Gray, Crabbe. Burns and Cowper, the set authors for the English pass period. First year Latin students will wrestle with Sallust's Catiline, and aspirants to pass honours in Greek wuth Thuscydides IV. and Aristophanes Lnights. of the general economics of the consumption, production and distribution of- wealth—words hurled glibly from every political platform at election time—form the substance of one paper for those who have been attempting to follow the political ltu™“ Mi°U. Ada “ SmUh and John Examinations will come and go, trii th !u V,Ct,ms *his system will ' p V? e,r senses in forgetfulness and wait with bated breath for the hae* S? to 9 °r U P' h °P'ng for the best. Some of them will be still hoping . . . ! Meanwhile, University students o l f° I th;,V; f ;, ir - rmlSeS low the clutches of the Inquisition. As Rupert Brooke on examinations said: ’ “ . . . around me to left and right Hunched figures and old Bull, blear-eyed scribbling fools." DIPLOMATIST (?)