Every year some students are scared of the midterm and even more scared by the results. While most professors are pretty friendly with their term tests, offering a quick check of the important concepts so far, there are a few who use it like a fireworks display in a home for traumatized dogs.
“It was brutal!”
“I couldn’t do any of those questions!”
“Oh my god the exam is going to be impossible.”
The important thing to remember is that midterms and final exams are entirely different tests. The midterm is made by the professor with very little outside influence. They can ask what they want, try what they want, and then just deal with the consequences. Not just because they’re in charge of the course but because they know they’ve still got half a term and a final exam to fix the marks.
They can feel free to try new kinds of question, or gauge how students handle a different difficulty, and just scale the marks after the fact if it turns out things were a little too trying. Even Einstein inserted a cosmic fudge factor in a few of his equations. A professor playing around with their own marking distribution is no problem at all.
More often a difficult midterm is a motivator, a way to make students pay more attention. How many courses do you study? Now, which of those courses do you give the most attention? Is it the easiest one? Of course not! That’s the one you’ve got safely in the bank, the one which can suffer less attention while you concentrate on the courses you’re actually worried about. Now, here’s the important question:
Does any professor want their course to be the easy ignored one?
Of course not! So what can they do? Scare students into studying with a brutal-but-minor midterm! A low class average means high class concentration! (If your professor tells you this was the lowest year the mark has ever been, I’ll bet they say that almost every year…)
But the final? The final is for keeps. The final is where the professor is rated just as much as the class. If an entire year tanks the test it looks bad for everyone, including the professor. Of course they won’t pass people who didn’t answer the questions. But they’re not going to effectively fail themselves by making those questions impossible. Rescaling final results is all kinds of trouble, and students hassling the administration to recheck the results is no fun for anyone. It’s better for everyone, both class and professor, if the final works fairly.
So if you’re scared by the midterm, accept the lesson! Learn the course. Look at where you failed and fix that before the final. Because it’s designed to let you earn all the marks you need.
“It was brutal!”
“I couldn’t do any of those questions!”
“Oh my god the exam is going to be impossible.”
The important thing to remember is that midterms and final exams are entirely different tests. The midterm is made by the professor with very little outside influence. They can ask what they want, try what they want, and then just deal with the consequences. Not just because they’re in charge of the course but because they know they’ve still got half a term and a final exam to fix the marks.
Sometimes students get shredded by the midterm because that’s what it’s for.
They can feel free to try new kinds of question, or gauge how students handle a different difficulty, and just scale the marks after the fact if it turns out things were a little too trying. Even Einstein inserted a cosmic fudge factor in a few of his equations. A professor playing around with their own marking distribution is no problem at all.
More often a difficult midterm is a motivator, a way to make students pay more attention. How many courses do you study? Now, which of those courses do you give the most attention? Is it the easiest one? Of course not! That’s the one you’ve got safely in the bank, the one which can suffer less attention while you concentrate on the courses you’re actually worried about. Now, here’s the important question:
Does any professor want their course to be the easy ignored one?
Of course not! So what can they do? Scare students into studying with a brutal-but-minor midterm! A low class average means high class concentration! (If your professor tells you this was the lowest year the mark has ever been, I’ll bet they say that almost every year…)
But the final? The final is for keeps. The final is where the professor is rated just as much as the class. If an entire year tanks the test it looks bad for everyone, including the professor. Of course they won’t pass people who didn’t answer the questions. But they’re not going to effectively fail themselves by making those questions impossible. Rescaling final results is all kinds of trouble, and students hassling the administration to recheck the results is no fun for anyone. It’s better for everyone, both class and professor, if the final works fairly.
So if you’re scared by the midterm, accept the lesson! Learn the course. Look at where you failed and fix that before the final. Because it’s designed to let you earn all the marks you need.
