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YOUR UNIVERSITY years may be the best of your life, but they will also be peppered with exam stress. Exams loom large in the lives of students and I’m writing this to bring some attention to the unhealthy and outdated term structure in our universities.
Lots of you might be thinking that I’m just another student complaining about my workload. That I have poor time management skills or that I’m simply lazy.
However, I do work consistently and, like many of my peers, still seem to be under a tremendous amount of stress because all of our exams are concentrated at the very end of the year.
Low amounts of continuous assessments
I am an engineering student and have an average of 15 hours of lectures, classes and labs a week. We study ten different modules each year. Unlike some other colleges we take approximately nine of these module exams all in one go in the summer.
This means that we have nine exams with hardly any spacing between them. All of these exams carry from 70% up to a 100% of a module’s total grade. Just imagine studying nine dense engineering modules and having to remember all that information (some of which is from five months ago) and not get them confused.
This kind of exam system places a huge emphasis on memory recall, as opposed to actual learning. With virtually no continuous assessments and the year not being broken up into exams for semester one and two, students don’t really get any feedback or application of what they are learning.
Instead we are expected to memorise and regurgitate everything over a two-week period in the summer.
Universities prioritise research over teaching
I’m an engineering student but I know that the same is true in many other courses. Irish universities have long been opposed to the full semester system, in which subjects taught in the first and second semester are assessed in the semesters themselves.
Breaking exams into semesters would mean more marking and interfere with research. And I’m deeply troubled that those in charge of teaching seem to prioritise research over their students.
Our higher education system has become so lopsided away from teaching that universities need to fundamentally rethink their role and priorities. Lots of our universities see their reputation, their standing in prestigious international league tables and their marginal funding as being mainly determined by scholarly output, and so teaching comes only in second place.
Anxiety and abuse of prescription meds
Panic attacks are not uncommon during the exam period. A a student I have seen the extent to which some of my peers have been pushed. Even worse is the abuse of prescription drugs like Modafanil and Aderall.
Students turn to these ADHD drugs try and stay alert longer, enhance their memory and study ability. I have been offered these drugs and I actually considered taking them in my first year. I said no but I have seen many friends turn to drugs.
We need to talk about making alterations to the current system and we also need to remember that current students are still at the mercy of this archaic and dangerous system of teaching.
I write this in the hopes of getting a dialogue started. We have to divide the academic year into two halves.
The writer of this piece has asked to remain anonymous.
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Can I have my money back now
It’s like’…..burning your furniture – to keep warm!
Why are PwC saying this instead of IBRC and NAMA?
As property prices start to rise nama , ibrc start to dump property
Can someone explain why?
Dumping loans philip, not property. They’re Dumping the loans as they’re non-performing and want to get them off the balance sheet.
If they had the patience, they’d put arrangements in place to allow the properties to return to positive equity and then seek a sale, this recouping more of the tax payers money.
Unfortunately, they’ll sell the loans for a discount and allow the new purchasers to do this and net a tidy profit.
The article outlines that IBRC (IBROKE would probably be a better name) will offload € 15 billion in loans.
Yet the linked article tells us that IBROKE have already offloaded 90% of its loanbook, € 19.8 billion out of € 21.7 billion leaving just € 1.9 billion on hand.
This can only mean, if the previous article is correct, that it is NAMA that is offloading the majority of the loans.
Why the subterfuge?
Why make people think that this is some kind of joint enterprise when it is NAMA that is leading the charge?
Have the shiny suit brigade from the canal something to hide?
Given their obsession with secrecy it would not surprise me if they have, perhaps selling the loans to some preferred customer with an inside track at a serious discount.
The way things go it will all be wrapped up before we know anything, plus ça change.
Who in their right mind would buy this junk?
It might only be worth 30% of face value but if you buy it for 20% it’s a good deal. For the buyer anyway.
@ Irish Revolution
The Banks?
Hedge funds bought it. They will now sell off all the ghost estates etc at a lower price so people that have houses for sale at the min will eventually have to sell for half or take them off the market.
Fab house here in drogheda asking price €325. Hilarious. You could now nearly get a house for that on raglan road or ailsbury road!! So that house is realistically worth less than €150 really.
People and notions ha
What about Bank of Scotland selling on my mortgage & others in their Irish portfolio to a company called Tanager Ltd.
I’m in a tizzy all day because I don’t know what it means for us.
have your say