If you fail an examination, it means you have not yet master the subject. With diligent study and understanding, you will succeed in passing the exams.
They say life is a test and this is a ridiculous idea! There is neither examination nor examinant! You encounter problems in life either because you are stupid or your path just crosses with the problems’ path by luck! Nobody is sending you problems to test you! Stay loose and chuck out the irrational idea of ‘test’ at once!
Rincewind picked up a spare paper and read it.It was headed: Examination for the post of Assistant Night-Soil Operative for the District of W'ung.He read question one. It required candidates to write a sixteen-line poem on evening mist over the reed beds.Question two seemed to be about the use of metaphor in some book Rincewind had never heard of.Then there was a question about music . . .Rincewind turned the paper over a couple of times. There didn't seem to be any mention, anywhere, of words like 'compost' or 'bucket' or 'wheelbarrow'. But presumably all this produced a better class of person than the Ankh-Morpork system, which asked just one question: 'Got your own shovel, have you?
My usual instruction to students when they are preparing to write their examinations is "think before you answer the questions". I am convinced that some multiple choice answers could be so close that you might not know the very one that answers the question correctly! Such is life. To choose your suitable dreams, you must think well!
As cliché as it might sound, I'd rather lose than win by cheating. The latter is a much deeper, more personal loss in that one is admittedly whispering to himself his lack of competence. His cheating then begets more cheating, as he is ever-privately, ever-subconsciously insulting himself; thus, gradually deteriorating any remaining confidence.
I hate reading poems—school made me hate them. I’d spend hours interpreting one, just to read the memorandum and realize I’d be fucked during exams. I remember making a little asterisk next to every question I struggled with, and at the end of the paper, I’d realize I was looking at the fucking Milky Way.
Most of us are pseudo-scholars...for we are a very large and quite a powerful class, eminent in Church and State, we control the education of the Empire, we lend to the Press such distinction as it consents to receive, and we are a welcome asset at dinner-parties.Pseudo-scholarship is, on its good side, the homage paid by ignorance to learning. It also has an economic side, on which we need not be hard. Most of us must get a job before thirty, or sponge on our relatives, and many jobs can only be got by passing an exam. The pseudo-scholar often does well in examination (real scholars are not much good), and even when he fails he appreciates their inner majesty. They are gateways to employment, they have power to ban and bless. A paper on King Lear may lead somewhere, unlike the rather far-fetched play of the same name. It may be a stepping-stone to the Local Government Board. He does not often put it to himself openly and say, "That's the use of knowing things, they help you to get on." The economic pressure he feels is more often subconscious, and he goes to his exam, merely feeling that a paper on King Lear is a very tempestuous and terrible experience but an intensely real one. ...As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take the examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment were contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one be a penny the stupider.