In praise of the written exam

I am in one of the only Div School classes offering a written final (i.e. not a language exam), and my friends in other concentrations have reacted with disbelief: "What!? This is graduate school!" "So, you're supposed to memorize all the Bible stuff?" "Why can't he just have a paper, like everyone else?".  The kindest responses have sought some kind of professorial utility: "Well, it makes it hard to plagiarize" or "Must be easier to grade." 

Here's the thing: I love final exams. I think they're effective learning tools. Moreover, I think they're nifty. 

Why? Well, first of all, they force me to review the whole semester. An exam doesn't even have to be well-written to do this, just threatening. In studying for an exam, I make sure that I have at least a passing familiarity with all of the material. When writing a paper, by contrast, I focus on the few texts or theorists relevant to my research. In short, exams give me a better shot at remembering the course material.

But it's not just about "remembering all the Bible stuff." It's about considering all the Bible stuff. When we write, we choose what we think is interesting or good, and start from there. This is a useful skill--discernment--but only when used in conjunction with openness. I know that I am all too quick, as someone at the very start of my career, to reject work that I find inadequate, or flawed. The exam forces me to look at each scholar we've read this term, and ask myself seriously, "What does this contribute? Why is it important?"

While paper-writing helps me focus my thinking and make connections on the micro-level, exam writing requires a broad perspective. A good exam requires the student to make connections between ideas discussed separately in the class, to think about the construction of the course and the larger concepts behind it. A great exam requires the student to think about the implications of those connections in relation to the broader field of study. I had a teacher in 12th grade who famously said, as he passed out blue books, "Showing me that this exam is a doorway will earn you a B+. Stepping through that doorway is the only way to get an A." 

I like to think of that exam-doorway as the exit to the house we've been living in together all term. We've held discussion around the kitchen table, we've listened to lectures in the living room. We've had guest speakers and opened up the parlor, we've parsed some really tricky stuff in the home office. But now, it's time to leave, and the question is, what will we take with us? Do we know where we've been? Where do we go from here?

1,2...6,7

I love that course evaluations (my school does them online) come out during the reading period, because they make a great study break. They take me about 20 minutes, keep me thinking and writing, and I'd even argue that taking time to reflect on the goals of the course is good preparation for the final. Here at Div School, they are quite extensive, which I don't remember being the case at Undergrad College--except when I had a professor come up for tenure and had to fill out the freaking SATs of course evaluation. Seriously, they had to use the high-volume stapler on that shit.

...Anyhow. These questions ask something like "How well did the professor facilitate class discussion?" and then give you a scale of 1-7, where 1 is supposed to mean "What class discussion?/It was psychological torture" and 7 is "I learned as much from my classmates as from him/It was all Socratic method up in there, all the time", and almost every class is somewhere in the 3-5 range. But I would love to see a distribution curve on student responses, because I almost never use most of the buttons, and suspect that I am not alone in this.


Visual aid:

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
What it’s supposed to mean:	Worst ever.	Quite Bad.	Bad.	OK.	Good enough.	Excellent!	Best ever!
What I think it means:	I would file a formal complaint if I weren’t terrified of this bigoted asshole.	N/A	N/A	N/A	Bad to OK	Good enough.	Excellent to Best Ever!

I am immediately struck by how much this resembles the way that I interpret paper grades:

Visual Aid #2:

	F	D	C	B	B+	A-	A
What it’s supposed to mean:	Inadequate.	Bad.	OK.	Good.	Very good.	Excellent!	Best ever!
What I think it means:	Plagiarist/ Non-sentient life form.	N/A	N/A	Just go home already.	Warning: you’re kind of going off the rails here.	Nice try, kid. Better luck next time.	Great! You should do this as a job!

So maybe what we've got here is a case of course-evaluation inflation. I'd be curious if this happens on other rating scales. Do folks make use of the "middle buttons" in evaluating politicians or TV shows?  For that matter, is this just me and my tendency towards excessive positivity? Are other students out there using the full range? OTOH, I've been known to "round up" in a case where I know my classmates are "rounding down" for the wrong reasons--once, for example, someone straight-up told me that she was giving a female professor "a horrible evaluation" for being "too demanding and aggressive about her ideas." You better bet I gave all 7s and wrote a glowing review of the professor's "high standards", "commitment to student excellence" and "willingness to incorporate expertise from her own research." I did think she was a great professor, but the line between evaluation and polemic was a little blurred.

So what do you think? How do you use evaluations, particularly the quantitative measures?

Are you sure you don't want to be a rabbi?

So I get this question from my classmates about twice a week, at least. And I understand why--I am at divinity school, after all! A fair amount of these folks will enter the ranks of professional clergy themselves, and there are some ways in which I clearly fit the role: I'm an active and committed Jew, and I enjoy talking about religious life beyond the boundaries of my academic discipline. I'm a damn good preacher (if I do say so myself), a good listener and leader, and I have an inexplicable talent for getting on the good side of notoriously cantankerous old people.

But my answer is simple - no.  This certainty does not come out of any disrespect for the profession, let me be absolutely clear. But they keep asking. And these are my favorite classmates: the inquisitive ones, the feisty ones, the feminists, the ones that pay attention to the text and each other, people I respect deeply, people who I think would make great academics if they weren't already committed to ministry. So what's up?

Is this just a reflection of our natural tendency to assume others want what we want? That folks who are awesome must really be like us? Is it like how I secretly hope all the smart ones are gay? Or, on the other hand, does it get at some of the underlying tensions in this field between "church" and "university"? Or is it just about stereotypes? If someone is kind and thoughtful, or has not-completely-arcane theological insights, she must be destined for the pulpit, rather than the classroom? Or on my side, am I assuming that all critical-minded people end up writing, rather than ministering? Are we saying that the academic is dry and the preacher dull? I readily admit that I wonder if this dichotomy is less noticeable to my colleagues in New Testament or Theology, departments that have (here, at least) more clergy among the professorial ranks. Or for that matter, any women, which probably makes it easier to see female students as future professors. (Have I just given away my institution? Tragically, I think not.)

When my mentors were my age, scholars and clergy alike got the MDiv--it was the only degree that offered the preparation in Hebrew, Greek, and modern languages needed for graduate work in Bible. Curriculums were pretty standardized, which is to say, clergy got a little more academics and academics got a little more God. Also, they walked uphill to Systematic Theology. Both ways. In the rain. In all seriousness, though, I wonder if the move to two-year MAs and MTSs might not be a bit of a regression. Are we not here, in part, because we believe in the spirit of a joint enterprise between lived religion and the academic study thereof? Aren't we here to learn from each other? Shouldn't out work be mutually informative? Finally, to deliberately mis-quote a deliberate mis-quotation (seriously, we can get into the backstory here another time), is not theology the theory and ministry, broadly defined, the practice?