They're Almost Done

For most students, January represents a return to Wabash at the start of a new year to slog though another semester. But for the class of 2010, January represents the beginning of the end, and senior comprehensive exams usher in that new reality.

 

The senior comps schedule was changed last year in an attempt to make them more convenient for both students and faculty. This year, oral examination took place the same week as the written examinations rather than during the first two weeks of February. This change allowed seniors, as well as faculty, to focus more on comps than classes.

 

“I’m happy with the change,” said Assistant Professor of German Dr. Brian Tucker. “Once classes begin and the semester is in full swing, it can be easy for the oral exams to feel more like a burden than a priority. It was good to be able to devote time and energy to orals without so many other obligations.”

 

Professor of Political Science and Div. III Chair Melissa Butler likes the changes.

“It allowed me to focus entirely on seniors for a week and not have to worry about rushing to and preparing for my next class,” she said. “Now that the semester has started, I can give my full attention to the students in my classes.”

 

Associate Professor of Religion and Religion Department Chair Dr. David Blix, has mixed reviews about the new schedule, leaning in favor of the changes, but sees some disadvantages of the new schedule as well.

 

“As one colleague noted, it was possible, during each oral, to focus just on the exam, and not fret about some upcoming class,” he said. “And it will be nice to have the month of February freed up for other things. I think the only suggestion that many of us have is to space out the orals a little more during the day. This year they were scheduled during what would have been the usual class times. I saw lots of folks running to get from one oral to another. Not that we all can’t use the exercise, but a little more breathing room would be good. This should be easy to fix next year.”

 

Faculty members contributed to the comp process by drafting questions for the written exams for their area of teaching, proctoring exams, serving as oral examiners, and grading written exams.

 

Seniors said they found the new schedule convenient but tiring, even after day one of Comps. They used several different methods of studying with many beginning preparation weeks before the examinations. Old examinations from past years seemed to be the popular way of studying, along with time-monitored writing trials.

 

“I had spent most of the prior week studying hard nearly all day each day. I had just written a thorough paper, and I had just sat and taken nearly three hours of written exams,” said Chemistry major Philosophy minor Jon O’Donnell. “It was a challenge for sure—not so much the lab, but finding the energy to move forward at my highest level.”

 

Both students and faculty described oral examinations as their “favorite” part of comps. In this part of comps, faculty members asked the seniors questions that connected their majors and minors to the liberal arts. Any selection of knowledge dealing with the seniors’ major was “fair game.” Some seniors found this to be an advantage whereas others felt it was a disadvantage.

 

Professor Tucker wants to see students take more risks. “My understanding of the purpose of the oral exam is to get students to begin thinking like a scholar and test the extent of a student’s ability to do so,” said Tucker.

 

“I get a bit frustrated by what I see as students’ attempts to play it safe, to be uncontroversial, to say nothing that will provoke debate or probing questions,” Tucker said. “My advice to students: it is surely better to be wrong in interesting and intelligent ways than to run out the clock with platitudes.”

 

“The questions were tough and made me think about areas of disciplines that had not been directly discussed in courses. But that’s the purpose of the oral exam—to get you to think like an academic and defend your position on those issues,” said Jeff Kessels, a Psychology and Religion major.

 

Kessels had a unique comp experience compared to other seniors—he had to take extra written examinations as a result of a double major. Thus, he had exams five days in a row instead of three days of exams.

 

Seniors must pass comps to graduate. Those who fail parts are allowed to take them again. “Departments differ somewhat on what a student must do who fails [written comps]—for example, if a student passes several parts of the [written comps] but fails overall because of only one part, he may only have to retake that part later this semester,” Butler said.