I just finished my first full (4-hour, 3-question) practice exam, and it was intense. I’ve been answering practice questions one at a time and synthesizing themes for a while now, but this was my first time sitting for the full four hours and answering all three questions. I had someone else pick six questions from a list of previous exam questions and copy them into a new document (so I could approach it in the same way as I will on exam day: having no idea what the question options will be until I get them). I have some thoughts:
After I decide which three questions to answer, make full(ish) outlines before answering them. I just scribbled down a few notes on a page and started writing as soon as possible, but I think that did me more harm than good. I ended up pausing to think a lot and working out the argument I wanted to make. If I had spent five more minutes outlining, I might have saved myself up to half an hour of rethinking and organizing my argument.
I need to be sure to answer the question. My first answer strays from the parameters of the question (though, in my defense, it’s a terrible question that is way too big to adequately answer in the time frame of the exam). In fact, I’m not even sure it answers the question adequately. I feel pretty confident about the second and third answers. The second one dealt with one of my research interests (genre), and the third one was all about my research and teaching interests (identity and social media). The first should have been easy since I’m also interested in digital technologies and writing, but I think I was thrown by the “briefly compare oral and written styles.” In what way? I outlined how Ong compares them, but it struck me in the final moments of the exam that perhaps it meant that I should compare Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero to Richards, Weaver, and Burke, or something like that; that I should compare the rhetoric of orality to the rhetoric of literacy. Hopefully there’s a coherent answer somewhere in the 6-page jumble of ideas I presented in response to that question. I’ll read it over again with fresh eyes tomorrow and see how I feel about it.
The first question makes me feel uneasy, but I have solid answers for the second and third. I’m cautiously optimistic that my actual exam will go smoothly next Monday.
Exam. Play. 