In Continuum.

So, you are writing and writing, and then you realize that you wrote a whole chunk of nonsense, and you'd like to erase everything. What would you do, go for the correctional fluid or the correctional tape? The correctional fluid would take a while to dry, while the correctional tape might make too much noise while you roll the tip over the surface of the paper. What if there is a jam inside the damned tape, what if it screws up? You have to open it up in the middle of the exam and clear the jam, and then waste precious time. What if you write too hard and you break the tape? You have to run the tape over the area again, and that causes more potential trouble. So here you are thinking, maybe you should forget about the fluid and the tape, and just go for the old fashioned way, and that is to cancel out everything you have wrote. But you care so much about the aesthetics, you wouldn't want your paper to look messy to the examiner, that'd give a bad impression. She might be more strict in marking your paper, so you are thinking about the fluid and the tape again. It makes things worse if you are a left-hander - just imagine all the smudges on your left hand after the paper! 

So, essay questions don't get a lot of love. To sum up, you have to memorize a lot of information, and you tend to make a mess when you are trying to correct a mistake. Still, I love essay questions, not so much because of essay questions themselves but my hatred for all the other formats. People tend to assume that multiple choice questions are a walk in the park, but I contend with that claim vehemently. True or false questions aren't that good either, and I will go in-depth as to why I think they are the worst format in any paper. Essay questions, to me, tend to feel like a freelance writing for some reason. Here is a question that you need to answer, and you have all these knowledge in your head just floating around, waiting for you to utilize them for the answer. You can write whatever you want, however you want, and structure it in a way that satisfies you. Of course, you still have to adhere to the rules of a paper, but you still get the creative freedom anyway. Your answers are not restricted to boring alphabets, but the entire library of words in the dictionary. How fun is that! 

Let's begin with true or false questions - they suck. I despise true or false questions with a passion because of how absolute they are. They take a statement that is related to the topic, and then they ask you if that statement is true or false, so far so good. But I dislike the feeling of the answer being so absolute, the whole "all or nothing" deal. The statement is either true or false, you are either right or wrong - well, who said that? Why can't the statement be a bit of both, or why can't I be more right then wrong. Sometimes, a statement can be relative, it's not all right or all wrong, all true or all false sometimes. You get those grey areas every once in a while, and debating with yourself is not going to work things out because two halves of your brain are tugging at each other inside your skull. So, true or false questions are pretty nerve-racking to me, they are so absolute. It's kind of like death, you either get life or you don't get life, that's the end of the story, and all the options you are going to get. It always reminds me of Eddie Izzard's routine somehow, whenever he goes," Cake or death!" It amuses me to no end, but what if the cake is poisoned? That is what happens in any true or false situation, the dilemma. Damn it. 

Multiple choice questions, students usually cheer on that one. If the lecturer decides to use this as a format for his or her paper, students are usually overjoyed after the announcement. Students like to have options, they like to have different choices. With multiple choice, you don't have to have your knowledge set in concrete, you just have to have the right skills in putting two and two together. Read the question, find the answer that makes sense, go for it. That is what they like, the knowledge that you don't have to have full knowledge of everything, you just got to have a clue. That's all you need, like a blood stain or a finger print at a crime scene, and you can solve the murder by inducing the answer. It makes you feel good, kind of like those detectives in crime novels pointing out the murderer at the end of the book in a crowded room. "It is you!", he would say, and then he'd feel good about himself for some time. That is, of course, if you actually chose the right answer from out of the four, sometimes five, options. So, what is there not to like about multiple choice questions? You get multiple choices, you get to feel good about yourself after choosing the answer, everybody is happy. 

No, I dislike multiple choice questions, because of the way lecturers tend to phrase those answers. Don't you just hate those answers when they say "All of the above" or "None of the above"? It messes with your head, it screws with your logic. Just when you thought that you had the right answer, the last option tells you that it might be all or none of the above. It's kind of like standing in a room full of potential murders, and you are the detective hired to solve the mystery. You are picking through the suspects only to find out that it may not be anybody in this room, but rather somebody else. There you were thinking to yourself "Hah! It must be the butler!", and then you see a tiny speck of blood on the gloves of the gardener. So you are telling yourself "Hold on, it may be the gardener! Yes, it is the gardener!" But then your partner, let's call him Watson, who has been observing things on a deeper level than you have, reminds you that he has noticed blood stains on everybody in the room, and that it could have very well been "All of the above". "Damn, Watson! I almost got that guy!" Yes, we have all been there before, those frustrating moments when the last option messes with your gut feeling, and it never fails to inject a sense of self doubt - it never fails. What if I'm wrong? 

So, the answer may be all of the above or none of the above. As if that isn't enough self doubt by itself, they have options like "A and B", "A and C", "B and C", and every possible permutations you can think of. So, it could be A, or B, or A and B, or none of the above, or all of the above! Great, now we have a whole range of reasons to doubt our intelligence. They might as well throw in a few more options from now onwards, just to confuse ourselves even more. Maybe A, maybe B. Perhaps C, but it is definitely not D. It is possibly A, or it could conceivably be C. The answer could be A, or is it? Maybe it is A and C, maybe not. Perhaps it is none of the above, or maybe some of the above. All of the above, or perhaps just part of the above. At least true or false questions give you a definite yes or no and right or wrong. This time, they make your answers ambiguous so you could end up being so right and wrong at the very same time. Multiple choice questions are evil, avoid at all cost. 

Matching questions are fun, you get to draw lines and then try to figure out the subliminal message in the lines. So far, only Jan has set matching questions, perhaps it is because it is deemed as being too childish for other lecturers. When was the last time you did matching questions anyway? Probably in junior high, remember those stupid civics and moral education workbooks? Something like that, at least that was the last time I did anything remotely similar to matching questions. Maybe they should throw in other types of format, like coloring. What's wrong with some good old coloring anyway, the younger generation does it in kindergarten. If they do it as a foundation for their education, it must be pretty important. Besides, the art of drawing within the line is a skill that cannot be achieved by a whole lot, at least that was what I believed when I was coloring those elephants in kindergarten. Only, they were always in the wrong color, but at least I never drew out of the lines. I think the schools should have creative lessons, teach students to color out of the lines, draw right onto the table, think outside the box type thing. It'd be great, better than multiple choice questions anyway. 

I remember a question in primary school the science teacher had for us, and the question was something like "Which of the following animal is a mammal?". I cannot remember all the options, but I know one of them was a whale and the other was a shark. Now, I watched Discovery Channel a day earlier, and I clearly saw a shark giving birth to baby sharks. Those baby sharks were being shot out from the mother's womb like little bullets, and I remembered that by heart. However, I knew that whales are definitely mammals, I learned that from the textbook. So there I was, my fragile and innocent mind, being attacked by a mountain of self doubt because both looked like mammals to me because they both gave birth to little babies instead of eggs. So I put "sharks", thinking that it was a trick question. It wasn't a trick question, and I got the answer wrong in the end. Apparently, sharks lay their eggs inside their body and then they hatch inside before they are being spat out into the sea. Stupid sharks just can't give birth in the conventional way, now can they? Damn those baby sharks. 

There was this other question in the same paper, and I remember the question asked something like this: Other than flying, how do birds travel from one place to another? Like before, I cannot remember all the options, but I remember one of them being "walk" and the other being "hop". Now, if you think that I wasn't very smart in picking "shark" in the previous question, I am as guilty as charged. However, you cannot fault me for picking "walk" here, because birds do walk. Birds hop and walk, and that is the truth. Apparently the science teacher has never seen a walking bird, and she marked me as wrong for that question. I defended my choice with a lot of youthful passion then, but I was shot down in front of the whole class. I even asked the teacher to look out of the window at the birds outside to see if they walked or hopped. They weren't very cooperative that day, they all decided to start hopping just when the teacher leaned out of the window to take a look. But it was a hot day, and the parking lot downstairs was a sea of raging black fire. Of course they were hoping, who in the right mind would walk barefooted? 

Multiple choice questions, true or false questions, they are all evil. I say bring on essay questions so that I can argue my way through, at least I feel better that way. You cannot argue your answers if it is a true or false, or if it is n MCQ format. You just have to pick the alphabet, pick one or the other. It messes with your head, and it's bad for you. What's wrong with a little bit of writing anyway, surely it improves your skills in language. I suppose people don't write enough, and thus they don't speak well enough. It still bothers me when people pronounces words like "film" and "New Delhi" wrongly. I suppose, if we actually have more essay questions, stuff like that won't be happening. Maybe we should have more essay questions, or more coloring questions. Maybe no examinations altogether, or none of the above. It is all very, very confusing.