PULP Unreleased, Volume 3: How To Write An MMU Exam Paper

Originally intended for the website during exam season, it wasn’t finished due to time constraints and once the exams were done and dusted, it seemed a trifle redundant. It is presented here for the first time in its final drafted state.

At the moment, I am currently preparing for my first exams since 2006 (well, not really the first, but seeing as my last MMU exam was conducted in a computer lab, on the computers, with no internet restrictions or supervision, with the answer scheme readily visible to those who had finished – and all those sitting near them – I hardly think that counts as an exam), and the first exams I’ve cared about passing since 2004. Some things never leave you – like the sense of blind panic as you wonder why you’ve left it until the night before to read up on things you don’t understand – but some of it definitely has to be learned afresh after a considerable break from learning; proper research technique, effective use of time, memory tricks, these things took a while to get back into.

Of course some things are completely new to me – university-level examinations are a cut above A-levels and GCSEs, and require you to think deeper. Googling for answers can only take you so far. However, that’s far enough for me, so that’s what I’ve been doing. It’s only foundation year after all. My technique was simple; download the last three years’ worth of past papers (the questions never change), pop a few key words from the answers into Google with boolean operators, and see which presents itself as the right answer. It’s like asking the audience on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, except the audience is all the world’s knowledge. It’s incredibly reliable.

In a few instances, the answer was a little close to the paper in terms of wording; but that’s easily done – scientific language is quite rigid and some things have to be expressed in quite a specific way to avoid ambiguity. Then came this question on a biological form and function paper:

I googled a few answers, and the top result was this:

See that? That, right there, is a word for word cull from Wikipedia. And believe me, I checked, the Wikipedia article came first. Astonished, I put it down to a brief oversight on someone’s part, assuming they would not make the mistake twice.

Followed swiftly by…

Apparently not.

We have been told all year that referencing Wikipedia is one of the single worst things you can ever do. Handing in an article referencing Wikipedia is a slap in the face, and infinitely worse than handing in an article with no references at all – in fact, you would be better off smearing shit on a slice of bread and handing that in. Shitty bread is more acceptable than an article that has been tainted by Wikipedia’s sordid documents.

So imagine my surprise to see this. But frankly, I think it’s great that the university is experimenting with alternative sources for their questions – it must get boring always using the same peer-approved books and journals. In future, perhaps other “alternative” sources will be considered. I’ve seen some extremely interesting scientific discoveries published in the union toilets, on the walls – “Karen sucked six dirty dicks” sounds like an interesting experiment in virus transfer and immune system response times, and I can’t wait to see the results of these tests, which I assume will be written on the same stall door so as to avoid confusion with the work on the next stall (although to help differentiate the two equally valid sources, the latter’s publications are written in shit by mad tramps).

Or perhaps – and this is a wild thought – maybe the answers will be plucked from the grossly expensive textbooks we were forced, at gunpoint, to purchase at the beginning of the year. Seems mad, I know, but I’ve had a glance through one of them and amazingly enough, everything in them has been scrutinized and refereed by qualified experts to make sure that the book contains the truth and nothing but. At least that way we may get some questions that weren’t taken from a source that is about as closely monitored as the graffiti in the union toilets, and about half as educational.

John Tucker (03/05/09)