Pharmocology. The bane of my existence this term. Unfortunately, I made a yucky mistake and haven't really been doing so well at studying all along the way. Suddenly, midterms snuck up on me, and when I made a study guide to highlight to important points of the material we had covered so far, it ended up being 15 pages if 10 point font. All that and just a couple of days to learn it. Needless to say, I have spent an enormous amount of time in the past few days studying my guts out and praying, promising to reform my ways and study all along for the rest of the term if I could just pass this test. This morning, when I woke to go take it, I was anxious, still feeling unprepared, but just delighted to get it over with so I can quit stressing about it and move on to better and brighter things. A shower, subway ride, and about 15 minutes of talking about our sleep deprivation and stress with some of the other students, the proctor came in and handed out the test. We weren't allowed to start until everyone had their test, so I killed the time by filling in the bubbles in the scantron sheet that went with my name, and signing the honor code that appears on the front of every test that says I will not cheat. Finally, all the tests were passed out, and I opened the first page, my head full of medications for mental disorders, heart failure, dysrhythmias, angina, sleep.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Welcome to Drexel
I read the first question. Yes, I knew the answer, but we hadn't gone over that in class. I thought it must be from the book. How rude. After I had struggled through a dozen or so more questions, most of them about insulin, I got a little worried. Oh no, I studied for the wrong midterm. We didn't do diabetes in Pharm yet, we did it in adult health. I got the midterm days mixed up and I'm in big trouble. I hurriedly flipped to the front of the test booklet. Pharmacology. Nope, I studied for the right one. So I kept answering questions. I remembered that in the review powerpoints that she had posted on blackboard, there were some endocrine system questions (diabetes, insulin, etc). Hmmm, she must've covered that material closer to the beginning of the quarter in times past. Maybe she changed the order of the material this term and just forgot to take the endocrine questions off the test. I'll just answer them the best I can and talk to her about it later. So I kept going. And the questions about the endocrine system ended, and turned into questions about... what?! Pain relief meds, asthma meds? It was at that point that I really realized something was very wrong. A girl from the class had gone up to the proctor just a couple minutes before and asked if she had the wrong test. The proctor said no and sent her back to her seat. But this was the wrong test. We had not actually covered a single concept on that test. No mention of heart failure or high blood pressure. No bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. No interactions with grapefruit juice or irreversible movement disorders. The stuff I had spent so much time stressing over and studying for hours and hours was nowhere to be found. A few minutes after my realization, another person was brave enough to get up and inform the proctor that we hadn't learned a bit of the content on this exam, at which point pretty much the whole room erupted. Everyone had been thinking the same thing- I don't know this, I didn't learn this, what do I do? Well, by the time all this happened, I was like 2/3 of the way done, so I just kept plowing through while the proctor called various people, trying to work out the problem. I don't know who she actually talked to but our instructions were to finish the test and turn it in. I had finished by the time she worked all this out, so I turned it in, but other students were outraged, saying this whole situation was unacceptable and that they refused to submit an exam on material they had not learned, etc. Most people ended up just filling in random bubbles and submitting it, not even bothering to read the rest of the questions.
Thus it is at Drexel. Where else can you go for a scheduled midterm and end up with the completely wrong test?
Follow Up: Today we got an e-mail apologizing for this mistake as well as reassurances that we will be given the correct test and that the incorrect one's grade will not stand.
Posted by ShaNae at 4:08 PM
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
That is insane! What(interrobang) Learning crazy new things is hard enough without having to worry about insane administrative mix-ups.
But despite the wackiness, I bet you aced the test. :)
As totally irritating as I am sure that was for you, I find it totally funny! At least you gave it your best effort...and let me know how things turn out!!
I get more and more thrilled to start every time I read your blog.
SO you have to retake it anyway? That's stinky!! Oh well, at least you don't have to take the grade :)
Post a Comment