After 10 long and painful hours, I think I need to pack it in.
I have been working very diligently at my finance/accounting take home exam and I am ready to either jump off one of our many bridges or seek revenge on 2 of my wonderful profs (my finance and accounting profs are awesome...SO SMART).
I guess what has frustrated me the most about today is that I know the amount of input is not going to even come close to the output (%mark) I get for this assignment. We have 2 exam questions that are combined with our in-class written portion for a mere 10%.
Another frustration is the difficulty level of the question. OK....I understand the reasoning behind giving the class harder questions than in class - they want us to apply what we have learned to different situations....FINE, that makes sense. But when most of the class is struggling (ie. most of us are barely grasping what is going on in class), and the take-home exams are nothing like the examples in class, what do they expect? Personally, I am grasping things much better than a lot of other people (though likely around 1/2) and I obviously I am having quite a hard time with the questions.
Sorry, I trailed off a bit there...
So my second frustration is simply this - I stopped learning anything from either exam question about 4 hours in. I seem to be more concerned with getting it right, or make sure the numbers match, or making sure my spreadsheet is linked properly, that I have stopped caring completely about trying to understand what the numbers mean. Analysis - screw that! I am just trying to understand if I am using the right formulas in the right places.
So....
I guess what I am really saying, is that it would make more sense to give more simplified exam questions that relate (slighty, anyways) to the examples that are presented in class. This way I would likely care more about understanding what I was doing. I am sure I have spent half my day stewing, and being frustrated over the complexity of the question. Plus I think I am a little burnt out. You may have determined that from the litte rant I just had.
Anywho, I think it is time to take the advice of my dad and uncle and go cool off, and take a break. Probably a good idea to give me brain a break..it does have a headache.
Lots 'o popcorn and a movie sound like exactly what I need. Oh, and the beer I am drinking seems to be helping.
1 comment:
The input/output problem you mention means you're trying to do too good a job. If you see a gap between how much work you're doing and the size of the potential reward, there's a problem. Choose your battles wisely, in other words.
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