The Justice

Basically you're proposing to change the grading system from something objective (a test or paper) to something subjective (based on the professor's personal opinion of your "interview" or whatever). That's just stupid. Study for the test and research for your papers and you'll have nothing to worry about. Finals are part of the college experience for better or for worse, and they aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

A discussion about what you learned does happen... it's called a PhD oral exam. It consists of a person standing in front of a panel of faculty members while they ask you questions about your field. While I've never had this particular experience, I can't imagine it being any less stressful than taking a paper test.

In the same way some students can write flowery papers to make it seem like they know what they are writing about very well, certain kinds of people are very adept at talking people into believing they know what they are talking about. And if the professor suspects this, the grading system is not applied uniformly for all students as that particular student will be held to a different standard than the others. That doesn't seem very fair to anyone. Personal bias can come into play under your system as well. If a student and a professor disagree, the interview could turn into a shouting match and result in a bad grade. With paper finals, a student commits themselves to a particular answer or point of view and submits it to academic review. What's on the paper is the sole measure of student performance, and it is the student's responsibility to make their final work as academic and logical as possible. Personal appearance, tone of voice, foreign accent all do not come into play.

Your article seems to be aimed at reducing the stress load. I don't think your proposed solution has any merit- because it is infeasible to enact, doesn't save anyone's time, and doesn't reduce stress. Something a little more realistic might be a system like Wellesley has- self-administered and self-proctored exams that can be done at any time during the finals period. Of course, cheating then becomes more of an issue, and take-home exams are generally harder than in-class. But that's the trade-off. The current incarnation of the final paper or final exam isn't going anywhere, and has no good reason to change.

I've never found finals particularly stressful. If you keep up during the semester, it's not usually that excruciating. Perhaps some extra flexibility in terms of scheduling could be helpful (if, for instance, you have 4 finals over 2 days), but the final itself is not usually much more difficult than the tests, papers, etc over the semester.

Personally, the idea of something as subjective (and stressful!) as an interview horrifies me. I don't understand its advantages over something like a paper, in which you have plenty of time to articulate your thoughts more clearly and thoughtfully. It's my impression that competent professors are pretty good at noticing which students know the material.

Seriously. Yes, finals are hard. But you've been working in a system like this since middle school-- you know if you're the kind of person who gets stressed out by finals, and if you can't adjust your study/work schedule to accommodate this, you've got nobody to blame but yourself. Professors will usually be able to tell you more or less what will be on a final MONTHS in advance... anyone who's under a lot of stress put themselves there, either with poor-planning or over-committing on classes.

And besides, who doesn't work better when they're under a little stress?

Bekah I havent got your point of discussion here about 4 finals over 2 days, that must be exausting. Plz will you explain it more clearly.
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