Exams, New Zealand style.

My first exam of the semester was today. New Zealand's university system differs a bit from that of the USA: where American universities tend to have an exam week, New Zealand students have a month-long exam period to prepare. Between all the extra time on offer and the fact that exams tend to be worth a lot here -- 50% of the final grade is rather low -- I was very nervous. What should I expect? Had I studied enough? How would I know beforehand if I had? I reread my notes, delved into the texts and suggestions-for-further-reading, read every e-mail the lecturers sent. The library archives past exam questions: I skimmed the last six years' worth. Still I wasn't sure how I was going to do: there's no accounting for grading scales. When I climbed the stairs to the exam room (halfway across campus from the lecture room) and picked a desk under the raptor gaze of the two elderly ladies appointed as exam proctors, I was still worried.

I think it went fairly well, though. One of the lecturers had given us general topics for each of his questions: knowing those and knowing previous exam questions, his half of the exam was more or less gift-wrapped. The other was less predictable, but his questions made perfect sense given what he'd emphasised in lectures and labs. I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch, but some of those eggs are making suspicious chirpy noises...