Rethinking Examination

It is the ending of the year 2013. And in the middle of December, here comes my final semester exam. It is not the usual school final exam which I always took in the last twelve years, where exam was not the most crucial thing in my life. Whether I perform well on an exam or not, life goes on. But this is my life in university, and a university considered to be one of the best in Indonesia (bearing the name too).

What if I couldn’t perform well in the exam? In the last few years, education was served right in front of our face by our teachers and exam was just a kind of ‘formality’. But now, everything seems to be so serious and important. My routine hasn’t changed much since I left high school. Sometimes I still sleep in the class, or playing games while my lecturer is busy explaining things that I didn’t care.

All my life, I always considering examination to be worthless, it robs us from the essence of learning. We learn because want to learn, not because there are exams ahead. And when learning lost its essence, all our efforts are wasted. Remember why? Because there are no exams in real life. Exams just exist in school. Meanwhile, the real world consists of practical things and collaboration, as opposed to individual examinations.

But here I am, trapped in between the lines of pure learning and learning to face examinations. Will something bad happen to me if I didn’t perform well in my exams? Let’s find out. 🙂

*Meanwhile on the other side of my brain, I’d argue that examination doesn’t matter as long as we learn well. We will perform well on the exam, if we study well, anyway.