I wrote an exam today and it was pretty tough. They aren’t usually this tough.  Looking back at it now in hindsight, there wasn’t much one could do ‘more’ in preparing for the exam other than just knowing how stuff is done and what stuff is when they ask you. I suppose you perhaps could have done more exercises i.e... practised more but really the exam was about knowing what to do when it asked you to do it. The tough thing about the exam was not having to remember or know how to do something, which of course was the main idea but more the time it took to read the questions was very long. The questions were long winded. The paper was 3 hours but the content of the paper was more appropriate to a 4hr or longer exam. I read as fast as I could and I'm not a slow reader.

This exam was “Software development using Java”. And in most cases the exam was more about analysing scenarios and diagramming. Java was just the tip of the iceberg really.

Basics include Object/Class/sequence diagrams. Analysing requirements and designing and implementing solutions(in java) for those scenarios. Use cases and walk through along with acceptance testing and various bit and bobs.

Sometimes I wonder where the examiner thinks the student can find the time to not only think about the answer, follow multiple pages of information for the questions that follow, followed by questions themselves and then still find time to draw multiple diagrams and refer back to previous pages of information whilst looking for the next question’s referral to previous pages data. Tough stuff. And indeed that's what it was all about. Having done the build up to the exam in the form of multiple assignments, its quite obvious that the exam was not new material. It was content prepared from activities that would easily have appeared in assignments. This sounds fair, however these assignments take a lot longer to do, and a lot more is required and merely answering exam questions. So making the exam up form these assignment activities seems a stretch for me– particularly in the time and effort involved. And as mentioned most of the effort involved was not answering the question but it was reading it, and drawing it. Never mind.

That being said, there was a compromise, which I can only presume was due to the kinds of observations I’ve made here –  however done prior by the exam review team/staff, I imagine. I’m sure they realised the immensity of the tasks asked of this exam paper. So they threw a 40% saving grace multiple choice question section in. This means you can get 40% (minimum required to pass the exam) fairly quickly and then waste your time trying to read and get the rest of your marks in the time you’ve been allotted. So you can pass the exam, but you’re pretty unlikely to get a good mark.

I’m happy that there is a good chance I passed based on the accumulation of marks across the whole paper(even though I didn’t finish or answer everything), particularly in combination with the relatively easy multiple choice question section. I say relative in as much as the multiple choice questions where to select two options and often assess a diagram/scenario. Which while not your typical ‘easy’ ‘free marks everyone!’  multiple-choice variant, it was time-saving in contrast to the rest of the paper - which as I’m so painfully aware of now often asked too much of you, too many times draining previous minutes from the allotted 3hours. Making participating in the exam quite long and laborious.

What a day. But hey, I got through it in once piece. I can’t say the same about the other – I remember the guy in from of me, shaking his head and saying to those around him, “that was tough” and seeing most nod there heads in weary agreement. This was a battle, a hard fought battle. Bloody hell and its only Tuesday.