# Making the Most of One's Mind/Chapter 10

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EXAMINATIONS
IN the first chapter of the second book of Dickens' Our Mutual Friend we have the following account of an elementary schoolmaster, Bradley Headstone by name:
"From his early childhood up, his mind had been a place of mechanical stowage. The arrangement of his wholesale warehouse, so that it might be always ready to meet the demands of retail dealers—history here, geography there, astronomy to the right, political economy to the left—natural history, the physical sciences, figures, music, the lower mathematics, and what not, all in their several places—this care had imparted to his countenance a look of care; while the habit of questioning and being questioned had given him a suspicious manner, a manner that would be better described as one of lying in wait. There was a kind of settled trouble in the face. It was the face belonging to a naturally slow or inattentive intellect that had toiled hard to get what it had won, and that had to hold it now that it was gotten. He always seemed to be uneasy lest anything should be missing from his mental warehouse, and taking stock to assure himself."
Here we have a scornful account of the state of mind ​produced by an excessive attention to examinations. But we are not to be misled by Dickens' contempt into thinking that examinations are necessarily bad. It is, no doubt, wrong to adopt the view that the mind is a mere storehouse and that knowledge is to be regarded as nothing more than the stock of a retail or even a wholesale shopkeeper. But it is quite a sensible thing to take stock now and then of our mental content, not only to see that there is nothing missing, but to make sure that what is present is arranged in the most satisfactory way. We have seen that the best way to remember things is to keep turning them over in our mind, and reviewing them in their proper relations to each other. This is obviously a form of examination conducted by ourselves. It is really a part of our education, and a very important part.
The same sort of work can be done for us in our regular studies by more or less formal examinations conducted by others. We are too apt to regard examinations merely as tests. No doubt this is often the function that is emphasized by all concerned with them. But we are not to forget that they have also an educational function. They form an essential part of our education, and if properly used are very helpful in our studies. If you have ever gone in for a serious examination involving a considerable amount of preparation, you have, no doubt, had an experience something like this. Just about three weeks before the examination is due, you have had ​the curious feeling that you are beginning really to know the subject, and if only you had other three months instead of three weeks you could truly master it. The cause of this feeling is that towards the end of your long preparation you are revising a good deal of the work you have previously done. Accordingly, you are dealing with much larger slices of the subject at a time than you have been accustomed to during your ordinary preparation. The result is that you have perforce to take wider views, you see things more in their relation to the whole, you begin to have a glimpse of the meaning underlying that whole. As you thus begin to appreciate the general principles underlying the detailed knowledge you have acquired, you inevitably tend to organize your knowledge and thus to experience a feeling of mastery that mere details cannot give.
Preparing to work an examination paper to be set by another person is itself a sort of examination of ourselves conducted by ourselves. The advantage of having a paper set by some one else is that we have to take into account the possibilities of questions being set quite other than those we have been setting to ourselves. We are all apt to get into a groove: we deal with aspects of our studies in which we are specially interested. But when we know that our work has to stand the test of questions set by a person who may not share our view about the interesting points, we have to take a wider sweep, and try to get a true estimate of the relative importance ​of facts, apart altogether from our own particular preferences.
When examinations are regarded as tests, they follow two lines. Some of the questions are intended to test merely whether the student knows certain things. Here the point is whether the student can reproduce what he has learnt. This is the lower kind of examination, and does not rise above the level of Bradley Headstone's mechanical stowage, and mental stocktaking. Other questions, however, are set on the principle of getting the pupil to apply the knowledge he has acquired. The student may know all the facts necessary to solve a given problem and yet be unable to solve it. On the other hand, if he can solve the problem, he has given proof that he knows the facts on which the solution depends. It would seem, therefore, that all examination questions should be such as involve problems, for if the pupil can apply knowledge, it proves that he possesses knowledge.
But it is felt that certain pupils may have acquired knowledge without having the ability to apply it, and that, therefore, there ought to be a certain number of questions in every examination paper for the benefit of those who have honestly acquired knowledge that they cannot successfully apply. It is maintained that the examination may be used to test the industry of the candidate as well as his ability. It may be very reasonably questioned whether any good end can be served by acquiring ​knowledge that we confessedly cannot use, but this problem has to be solved by those who are responsible for the drawing up of examination papers. Our interest in this book is how to help the student to deal most advantageously with examinations as they are. It is almost certain that at some time or other you will have to face an examination of some kind, and it is therefore to your interest to consider how you can best prepare for that examination.
(1) The first thing to be done is to find out as much as you can about the exact nature of the particular examination that you must face. From one point of view it is rather a fine thing to despise examinations and give your whole attention to your studies. If we work up our various subjects in the best way, we are entitled to expect that the examination will fit into what we have done, and to complain if the examination results do not favour those who have studied in the best way. All this would be just and proper if examinations were ideal. But unfortunately this is not the case, and if the passing of an examination is of importance to you, it will be to your interest to take the proper means to acquaint yourself with its conditions. To prepare for an examination that is not conducted on the best lines may in some degree interfere with your mode of preparation, and may make you to some extent depart from your ideals. But as a rule skilful preparation for a given examination may be combined with a satisfactory scheme of mastering the ​subjects studied. A good deal will depend upon whether the examination is competitive or merely a pass one. If you have only to reach a fair pass standard you will usually find that you can attain what you want without seriously modifying your plan of study. Such examinations can be "taken in your stride"; i. e., you can go on with your studies in your usual way and just give a little brush up before the examination actually takes place. With competitive examinations, on the other hand, when it is necessary to squeeze out of the examiners every possible mark, it may well be that you have to adopt quite a special line of study preparing for the examination, rather than studying your subjects for their own sakes.
This putting of the examination in the first place is in itself radically bad. The examination should be a means and not an end. If, in the ordinary work of a school, the examination at the end of the year dominates all the work of the year, there is something wrong. The cart is being put before the horse. The principle is educationally unsound. But in the case of a competitive examination, the result of which is to determine a scholarship or a post in the Civil Service or elsewhere, it is not a matter of education at all, it is a matter of economics.
But even an ordinary pass examination at the end of a school or college term deserves attention to the extent of your finding out its exact nature. I have come across many cases of young people ​doing a year's work, at the end of which they were expected to take the Intermediate examination of the University of London, without ever having examined the requirements in the different subjects. This did not result from a lofty view of the dignity of well-directed study, and a contempt for the restrictions of mere examination requirements, but from sheer indifference and lack of interest. These young people did their work from day to day as prescribed by their teachers, and thought that this was all that was necessary. The first thing these young people should have done was to get a copy of the syllabus in each of their subjects, and familiarize themselves with the field they had to cover in their studies during the year.
(2) In all cases where a printed syllabus of work is available it should be compared with the textbooks that you are studying. If anything appears in the syllabus that does not appear in the contents or index of your textbook, you must make it your business to supply the missing information. This is particularly necessary in the case of technical terms. If you are attending a class in the subject, it will probably be enough if you make a note of any such omissions, and then keep a careful eye upon this note during the session. If the lacking piece of information does not make its appearance in your notes of lectures, then it will be necessary to make inquiry from your teacher, within a reasonable time of the date of the examination.
​(3) In some cases, particularly in scholarship examinations and some of the higher civil service examinations, there is no published syllabus. The candidate is faced with the bald statement that he will be examined in, say, English, Greek, Latin, Mathematics, and Physics. In such cases it is usually possible to procure copies of former examination papers. If you can get hold of the papers for a few years preceding the date of your own examination you will be able to form a serviceable idea of the nature and scope of the examination. But there is a strong, and not altogether illfounded, prejudice against using old examination papers in preparation. The usual objection is that those who adopt this method are really placing the examination in an altogether too commanding a position in relation to the real work of education. But here again the same considerations come in as in connexion with the question of examinations in general. If we were dealing with a class test or an ordinary non-competitive examination, there is no doubt that a study of the old papers would be undesirable. But where there is competition there should be equality of advantages. Of two candidates preparing for the same examination, the one who has used old papers has a very great advantage over the one who has not. It is for this reason that in connexion with certain examinations every effort is made to prevent the publication or distribution of the examination papers. But the result is usually that certain unscrupulous ​persons obtain old papers, and thus get an illegitimate advantage. It would be fairer all round to publish the papers and let everybody have the same chance.
Granting that the use of old papers is justifiable, the question remains of how to make the best of them. Students sometimes make the serious mistake of merely glancing over old papers and saying to themselves, "Well, I could do numbers 2, 3, 5, 6, 9 easily, numbers 1, 7 and to fairly well, but numbers 4 and 8 I couldn't do at all." This general impression is of little use. What is wanted is that you should sit down and work out the paper as a whole under examination conditions. This means that you must set apart three hours, or whatever the regular time is, and sit down and work out the paper as if the examiner were in your room. In this way you will learn a great deal. To begin with, you will almost certainly find that the questions you thought you could easily "polish off" have much more fight in them than you had expected. Then you will probably find that you have miscalculated the time, and at the end you have to hurry over matters that you know to be important. The real fact of the matter is that while working examination papers is supposed to test general intelligence, it really tests mainly the power to write examination papers. To do examinations is a business like any other, and has to be learned. An experienced writer of examination answers will get far more value out of the ex​aminers than one who has no experience of working papers but bas the same amount of knowledge of the subject as his more experienced rival. The important point for you to remember is that of two candidates of equal experience in writing examination papers that one will have the advantage whose experience has been gained in papers that most closely resemble the paper in question. Enough has been said to show the importance of practising working out the very sort of papers likely to be set, and that under precisely the conditions that will obtain at the real examination.
(4) More doubtful is the advice sometimes given to make a study of the personality of the examiner. The doubt, it is to be noted, is on the moral side. There can be no question of the advantage of a knowledge of the peculiarities of an examiner who is to set and mark your papers. The question is whether it is justifiable that candidates should seek for and utilize this information. Probably the matter can be best compromised by regarding as legitimate the use of any public facts about the examiner. A glance at Who's Who may give you a hint or two that are open to the whole public. If he has written books on the subject, it is surely legitimate to consult them, and make whatever application your intelligence suggests.
(5) The zone of real danger is approached when we consider the calculation of the probabilities of particular questions being set at a given examination. ​Here we are introducing the sporting element, and backing our guesses by paying particular attention to the sort of questions that we expect to be set this year. Certain cramming institutions have carefully prepared tables showing the chances of particular questions being set at certain examinations. The element of the real importance of a question is dwarfed in view of the recency of its appearance on an examination paper. It may be safely said that all considerations of this kind may be very wisely neglected by the honest student. He should be always ready for any of the "stock" questions that may be set, whether they appeared last year or ten years ago. To be really prepared for the examination implies the power of dealing with any of the stock questions, and for any peculiar question it is neither possible nor desirable to make preparation. Such questions owe their value to their power of testing the capacity of the student in dealing with unexpected matter.
(6) In the actual working out of an examination paper in the examination hall some hints may be of use. To an experienced examinee what follows will no doubt appear very elementary, but we must consider the case of the less experienced. Taking it for granted that the immediate purpose of the examinee is to extract from the examiner the greatest possible number of marks, we have to work on the very humble plane of utility, and consider how this end can be best attained.
​(a) Come to an examination with a well-rested body and brain. This is a rule that the best students find it hardest to observe. There is a class of students that have no difficulty in avoiding the addling of brains that necessarily follows on the late sitting of the night before an examination. But your genuinely anxious student can hardly be convinced that it is folly to cram up a few more facts at the expense of the general vigour of all his answers. Do not be misled by the remark common among students that if they had not ground away far into the early hours they would not have been able to answer this or that question. No doubt it sometimes happens that a student has re-read at his late sitting the answers to some of the very questions that meet him next morning. To begin with, this is only a chance, and cannot be relied on: while the general muddleheadedness and lassitude are certainties. Again, while the chance help affects only one, or at most two, of the questions, the general weariness affects the whole paper. You will be well advised to go to bed early on the evening preceding an examination and to be in the examination hall at least ten minutes ahead of the time for the paper.
(b) Consider, the evening before, what you have to take with you to the examination, hall. In some examinations everything is provided in the hall. But even if ink is provided you will be well advised to take your own pen with you. A pencil is always convenient, and if you have practical work of any ​kind to do it is well to have with you whatever instruments you are allowed to bring. It frequently happens that one's own instrument adds materially to one's courage at an examination. One article should never be left behind. The clock in the examination hall is not always visible to all the candidates. Besides, it is sometimes wrong. You must run no risk of finding out at the end of the time that when you thought you had half an hour you have only a quarter. A watch—a watch that will go—is an essential part of your examination-room equipment.
(c) Read your whole paper and note whether it is printed on both sides. Few candidates read their papers with anything like the care that those papers deserve. Frequently they come away happy, only to discover when the paper is beyond recall that it contained some important remarks on the other side. The cause of the common blunder is not far to seek. Questions are long and time is fleeting. Time must be saved at all costs, and the foolish candidates begin to economize at the wrong end. Let them consider the remark of a distinguished surgeon to his assistant who was eager to lose no time: "In cases of this kind the surgeon has no time to be in a hurry."
Connected with this rule is the problem whether a candidate should read all the paper at once before beginning to answer any questions, or should start right away with the first question he can face. It is sometimes argued that by reading over the whole ​paper the candidate gets discouraged, and cannot do well even what he knows, through the shock of discovering how much he does not know. While it must be admitted that for the ordinary student there are few more depressing documents than sheets of examination questions, it seems an ostrich-like way of meeting the difficulty to avoid seeing it as long as possible. Every experienced examinee will tell you that at the beginning of an examination the nerves are hardly in a condition to carry out the orders of the brain, even when the brain knows precisely what to order. The time spent in studying the paper as a whole encourages the nerves to settle down to steady work. Besides, everyone with any experience knows that the first sight of the examination paper almost always has a paralysing effect that produces the feeling that the paper is an impossible one, and that failure is staring the reader in the face. The time spent in considering the paper as a whole gives this feeling leisure to fade, for there are few papers that do not present some foothold for even incompetent candidates. The final reason for reading over the whole before putting pen to paper is that our next rule becomes an impossibility unless this be done.
(d) Plan out generally the time that you can allow for each of the questions that you propose to answer. There must be nothing slavish in this. Eight questions in a two-hour paper give a comfortable quarter of an hour for each, with no time for revision; but ​it is always well to leave a few minutes free for re-reading your answers just before you hand in your paper.
In a three-hour paper there would be twenty minutes to each question with twenty minutes over for revision. But if one of the questions demands an elaborate analysis of a standard English Classic, while another will be content with the enumeration of a dozen English authors, a new element is introduced. But even after you have made a rough and rapid allocation of time to the different questions, you must not be too much tied down by it. On trial a certain question may prove to be more difficult than you thought. In this case you had better leave it unfinished, and go on to the next, leaving a space sufficient to hold the rest of the answer if your hope is fulfilled that there may be one of the other questions that balances matters by proving not so difficult as you had imagined.
But even if you do not find it possible to return to the unfinished answer, you have acted not unwisely in leaving it. For I am now going to say a rather heterodox thing. All our moral books din into our ears that one thing at a time and that well done is the true rule of life and the only pathway to success. I am not going to deny its truth in general—but in examinations it does not work. Leaving out of account the moral question, and considering merely the best way of extracting the greatest possible number of marks out of the examiner, it will ​be found that in an examination two half-answers are better than one whole one. There is an element of wisdom in the Irishwoman's method of buying her pound of tea by ounces, because she got "the turn of the scale every time."
To begin with, it has to be remembered that an examiner—except in the case of arithmetic and one or two of the exact quantitative sciences, where the principle does not hold—almost never gives the full marks for any answer, however well done; while a half-answer readily, and apparently justly, gets half-marks. If a candidate makes some correct remarks on a subject the examiner feels called upon to give some credit for them, and that credit is usually much greater than would be given for the same amount of time spent on elaborating a fair answer into an excellent one. For every candidate must have observed that the beginning of an answer is usually much easier than the ending. You remember easily the big important facts, and these rightly carry the bulk of the marks; but to put in all the fine details demands more knowledge, time and ingenuity than are always available. You can pour out a pot of honey in a few minutes or even seconds, but if the pot must be completely emptied in order to secure full payment, it seems likely that the additional time might be more profitably spent. Therefore make sure that you leave no compulsory question unattempted, even though you do not feel able to give a full and accurate answer.
​It may be well to add that these considerations are applicable mainly to public examinations conducted on a large scale by external bodies. In class examinations and in examinations intended to test ability rather than mere attainment other standards maintain. One really excellent answer may be accepted by the examiner as counterbalancing any number of half worked out but fairly accurate answers. You must therefore take into account the kind of examination at which you are sitting, and make up your mind beforehand whether you are going to rely upon a thin spread of knowledge, or a concentration on what you really know well, and a neglect of the rest.
(e) If there be a choice of questions, select those of which you are quite sure you know the answers. This is another rule that candidates find it very hard to obey. You may even accuse me of inconsistency in laying it down. You may say that it does not agree with the rule in (d). For I am now saying that a perfectly answered question brings more marks than one imperfectly answered. But the cases are not parallel. You may have observed in your experience that when you are not sure about a question it almost invariably turns out that you do not know what you were doubtful about. An answer of which you are not sure generally contains things you would rather have left unsaid, and it is precisely such remarks that reduce percentages of marks. Certain mistakes have the effect of not only ​not making marks, but of causing the withdrawal of marks legitimately won in other directions. When an answer is one-half right and the other half nonsense, the examiner is inclined to say to himself: "The blockhead who can make such blunders in one part of his answer, probably does not understand even what he has happened to put down correctly." So that it often comes out that half right and half wrong does not get fifty per cent, but only twenty-five. This may not be quite fair, still we are not here talking of fairness, but of how to gain marks, and the best way to gain marks is to choose the questions that we are sure of.
Further, it is worth your while to consider this point that the more difficult you find a question the more important you are apt to think it. What seems easy to you may be, from the examiner's point of view, more important than what gives you trouble. In certain examinations the number of marks allocated to each question is printed at the side. In such cases there is commonly much surprise among the candidates at the high marks given to certain questions that appear to them to be easier than certain others that carry much lower marks. This should strengthen you in your determination to select those questions that appear to you to be most within your powers.
(f) Every question has a definite point. This point must be discovered before any answer can be profitably attempted. No doubt questions are frequently ​put clumsily and ambiguously. They may not really have a point, but they are all meant to have one, and it is the candidate's business to find it. This is not the place to grumble at badly set questions. Our business is rather to consider how to deal properly with such inconveniences. If a question is really ambiguous you must choose one of the two meanings, and answer as if that were the only meaning. But be careful to state the difficulty you have had and that you have made the assumption that the meaning you have adopted is the true one. It is worth remembering that if the examiner has been ambiguous he is inclined to make allowances, so you need have no hesitation in adopting whichever of the two meanings happens to be the more convenient for you to answer.
But with an ordinary honest straightforward question this plan of adapting it to your own needs will not work. No one but an experienced examiner can realize the number of cases in which candidates attempt to cover up their ignorance on one point by an excessive display of knowledge on another. Now you may take it as axiomatic that this plan does not work. Even examiners have enough intelligence to insist upon getting what they want. Very probably, however, much of what the examiners complain about is the result not of attempts to throw dust in their eyes, but of careless reading of the questions. One very common cause of the misunderstanding of questions is the expectation that ​certain questions are likely to be set. The candidate who has prepared with great care and in much detail an account of the war of the Spanish Succession, sees the expected question on the paper and eagerly and voluminously answers it, only to discover when all is over that what the question had to do with was the Austrian Succession. In a Government examination for teachers a question was set on the uses to which school libraries could be put in the cultivation of the intelligence and in the teaching of composition. The majority of the answers dealt with the best way of getting up a school library and who should give out the books. These were the matters the candidates expected to be asked about.
(g) Avoid "shots" at examinations. We have already considered the place of guessing in the process of study, and the principles we have recognized enable us to come to a definite recommendation with regard to attempting to meet a question by an answer that may be compared to a shot in the dark. The chance of hitting the mark is so infinitesimal as to be negligible, while the result will probably be so ludicrously irrational that it is likely to reduce the value of the rest of the paper. But if the context suggests something to you, it may not be a bad plan to make your shot. Suppose you are asked, "Where is Khvalynsk?" You have never heard of the place before, but you may fairly guess that it is in Russia, and answer accordingly. ​The following is a typically honest "shot." The candidate was asked to explain the term Landskip, as found in Milton, and to give its derivation.
"This appears to be another form of what we now call a landslip, in which the land, on account of the slipperiness of the stratum underneath it, begins to slip down the hill, if it slips very fast it may be said to skip—hence the name. I have never seen this word before."
This candidate lost nothing by this ingenious guess, though, of course, he gained nothing, since he did not know that landscape is derived, according to one dictionary at anyrate, from an older form, landshape, though others say it really is another form of landschap, which means landship, and may be compared with the German landschaft.
Of course, it goes without saying that you will never make a shot at what you do not know, if there is any choice of things you do know; and if you do make your shot, you will do it with an indication of your data. It is perhaps in the translation paper that the temptation to make shots is greatest, and yet there the intelligent student with a feeling for language has a fair chance of success. The context is often so suggestive that it is not difficult to hit upon the necessary word. In cases of this kind it is not essential to declare that you have made a shot. The fact proclaims itself, and on the other hand the exercise is unseen translation is a sort of legalized shot-making. It is really an invitation to ​use all the knowledge you possess in order to discover a meaning that is hidden by your ignorance of certain words. If the passage is taken from a book which we are supposed to have prepared, the licence to shoot is no longer available, and if we shoot we must proclaim the fact and take the consequences.
(h) Be sure that you take full advantage of any information that the examination paper itself supplies. Even in such a trifling matter as spelling there is often help to be had from the printed paper. Candidates are sometimes so culpably careless as to misspell a word that actually occurs in the question set. But there are other ways in which one part of the paper may help another. For instance, examiners sometimes ask for illustrations of certain things, and the student has only to turn to some of the other questions to find all he needs. In a paper on English, for example, one question may be to give examples of various figures of speech, and another to specify which author is responsible for each of quite a large number of quotations. It will be rather remarkable if the intelligent candidate is not able to find among the quotations all the examples he needs. A really skilful examiner makes sure that his paper does not play in this way into the hands of the candidates; but then the supply of really skilful examiners is not in excess of the demand.
(i) Read over each question when you have fin​ished it, but if you have any time left at the end of the whole paper, you will find it well spent in rereading all your answers. You will sometimes be amazed at the mistakes you find, mistakes that you would not have believed it possible you could make had you not seen them actually lying there before you in your own handwriting. The last thing you should do before handing in your papers is to see that the proper number of the question is placed before each answer, and that your own name and any other indications are placed where they ought to be. This last is merely a special precaution, as every experienced student knows that his first business in dealing with his examination answer book is to fill in his name and other particulars.