Exams

rainbow kirby

pretty*monster wrote:

1) Where on earth it "Oratory (Opposite restaurant) - Graduate School of Business"
2) What the heck is "Science Bdg Concourse - Sci Edu/Res HUB"

2nd one just means you're on either the first or second floor of the main science building. Where our exams *SHOULD* be, but instead we're in the fecking RDS :(

pretty*monster

humbert wrote:

the science building concourse is the middle science building, where the main lecture theatres are,

So I'm doing a three hour essay question exam in a lecture theatre?

dajaffa

pretty*monster wrote:

So I'm doing a three hour essay question exam in a lecture theatre?

No, as far as I know they use the lobby-type area outside the lecture theatres

humbert

yea, it's grand to be honest. not too big so it's not as noisy is many of the other exam centres.

inverted_world

snickerpuss wrote:

Hmmm all our Irish exams are the wrong length (3 hours not 2) (not that this will help cos our lecturers have made 2 hour papers), they've left out 3 courses i have exams in and scheduled exams for imaginary courses no-one in 3rd irish (or possibly any year of irish has done) I've never even heard of some of the courses.

I wonder what imaginary exam i'm scheduled for.

I also wonder if the admin department can get anything right regards 3rd irish since they also scheduled imaginary exams for christmas.

I reckon Diarmad will talk about that tomorrow in the lecture. Yes the Irish is so confusing. There are 8 papers when we should have only 4. I'm hoping "Gaeilge "1 is Classical Irish. I want that out of the way as early as possible.
The Irish department have messed up so much this year though. I have no idea what continuous assessment I've actually done, it seems like it's been nothing even though it's actually counting for more than the exams this year.



Also, I'd like to take a moment to congratulate the wonderful thought that clearly went into timetabling the English finals. 19th Century lit. and Renaissance both on the same day. That'll have me good and confused. Ah sure, there's no point in ranting over it. We've no choice but to sit them, so might as well accept that they messed up this year. They are aware of it though, and from what I've seen, the departments are doing what they can to work in favour of the students. Or maybe I'm just lucky enough to have sympathetic departments?

They're hardly sitting laughing to themselves about how tough they've made it.

Stabshauptmann

Thats what I'd do if I was Hugh Brady!

Macka

14th/15th/16th/17th/18th - one exam a day, then the other two are on the 22nd and the 24th. Not too bad I guess but woulda preferred a stacked day, just to break up the 5 in a row. They fell pretty nicely too, reckon my strongest subjects are the first three so that first week isn't as bad as i may look and my weakest are the final two, so ye overall reasonably happy

bobbi

This Exam timetable is confusing it says i have the three exam i already did at the christmas exams.I'm third year Arts this can't be right it also has a time for a subject we don't have an exam in which i'm 99% sure of.

Riamfada

The courses from last semester that are on the list are repeats. Ask you department why there is an exam set for a course you have no exam in. If there is not exam then there wont be a paper so nothing to worry about

beanyb

I have an eleven day gap between my 2nd and 3rd exams... which is kind of great, but also kind of awful. I'd prefer to just get them over with.

Riamfada

Can I just say, without getting ripped apart. That admin have to cater for each exam on that list and each student. With no timetable for each student being exactly the same they have to make sure no exams clash? Seems like a massive feat of administrative work to me.

griffdaddy

Youre just asking for an attack from the rage against the machine brigade with that comment:D

Steibhin

Grimes wrote:

Can I just say, without getting ripped apart. That admin have to cater for each exam on that list and each student. With no timetable for each student being exactly the same they have to make sure no exams clash? Seems like a massive feat of administrative work to me.

They are truly genies and we should kiss thier scented toes for prodcuing such a marvelous piece of work... Don't credit people for doing the job they should be doing. Its like praising a bin man for emptying a bin.

Students have to accept a certain amount of clashing/inconvenient. What is not acceptable is that after all this wait I have a timetable with exams scheduled for two different days, with no explanation about which one is the actaul exam date. Its very sloppy work. But I'm sure you still think they are fine you being the The Great Defender of UCD Admin (seriously you should run their PR department)

humbert

I agree, it's tough but other collages manage it and it is their job. It would be a bit like a bank, after misplacing their customers funds, saying, 'well there are rather a lot of accounts you know'.

dirtydress

Does anyone know where "Memorial Hall E, Graduate School of Business" is?? I wana say Blackrock but I have other exams that just say "Blackrock" so is this some other magical exam hall??

humbert

I've exams there too, I think it's blackrock. Google returned this

rainbow kirby

Memorial Hall *is* in Blackrock.

Pythia

Memorial Hall is inside a building in the Smurfit School. Blackrock Exam Centre is in a building on its own near the gate. Both are grand. The Science Block is also grand for doing exams. I had my doubts about it, but after doing an exam there, I realised it was fine.

I have an exam scheduled twice, but one is a two hour and one is a one hour. I'm certain we only have one, which is a one hour so I suppose I'm supposed to ignore the other one.

MST30040 Differential Equations 17/05/2007 Thu 15:00 16:00 01:00 RDS Pavilion 3 RDS Simmonscourt

MST30040 Differential Equations 24/05/2007 Thu 14:00 16:00 02:00 Blackrock Exam Centre Blackrock Exam Centre

If that's the case, I've 14th, 16th, 17th, 21st, with the 17th one only being worth 20%, so I'm quite happy!

griffdaddy

humbert wrote:

I agree, it's tough but other collages manage it and it is their job. It would be a bit like a bank, after misplacing their customers funds, saying, 'well there are rather a lot of accounts you know'.

no, it'd be a bit like a bank saying '22,000 of our customers want to physically do in or around 6 transactions around the same time in the vicinity of each other over a limited period of time and certain transactions can't overlap, and people should have to do as few of their transactions as possible on the one day.' Which isn't really the same thing

dajaffa

Just in case people find it amusing, I sit on Academic Council and the reasons we were given for the late release of results dates were...

The mixture of modularised and non-modularised students which will no longer be an issue after this year.

and

A big one was they were aware of all the problems at Christmas so they wanted to make sure that the timetables would be perfect when they were released, ie no clashes and exams to some degree were spread out over the course of the exam period.

No really! Now whether to laugh or cry...

Sinfonia

griffdaddy wrote:

no, it'd be a bit like a bank saying '22,000 of our customers want to physically do in or around 6 transactions around the same time in the vicinity of each other over a limited period of time and certain transactions can't overlap, and people should have to do as few of their transactions as possible on the one day.' Which isn't really the same thing

But it's not like this situation caught UCD administration by surprise.
Exams are on at the same time, every year.
They could've given us a provisional exam timetable in January if they'd wanted, why wait until 3 weeks to exams, and still don't even do it properly then?
Exams are a stressful time for a lot of people, and most people don't need the stress of not even knowing when their exams are piled on top of the work they have to do.
As for the bank analogy, if the bank ****ed up for the reasons in your example, there would be uproar from its customers. They get paid for a reason, they have a job to do and they haven't done it to customer satisfaction.

Tan Princess

I don't understand why all the final year economics exams are in a week and a half when the exam period is 3 weeks. Can we complain about having 5 in one week?

Sinfonia

Tan Princess wrote:

I don't understand why all the final year economics exams are in a week and a half when the exam period is 3 weeks. Can we complain about having 5 in one week?

I really hope so

drdre

SumGuy wrote:

I really hope so

we complained today, commerce 3rd yrs because we have 4 exams in 2 1/2 days.
So lets see what happens.I dont think they will change it as i heard you cna only complain until tommorrow as they have to finalise it

Tan Princess

So who do we complain to? Do we go over to admin?

Chakar

I've got five exams on the following dates. The 15th, 16th, 18th, 19th and 29th.

Its not too bad though it was better at Christmas.

Sinfonia

Tan Princess wrote:

So who do we complain to? Do we go over to admin?

I would think the best route is through the class rep,
I'm not sure how to go about complaining otherwise

mloc

I posted this in another thread, but two of the worst I've heard is final Physiology have 9 in 5 consecutive days, and final Civil Eng were hit yesterday with news that their exams start a week early (the 7th instead of the 14th).

A total and absolute disgrace.

Stepherunie

Class rep would be one route. Write an email/letter send it to the exams office or logistics or whatever they've called themselves now.

Talk to you lecturers, complain to them, they have an input as to moving exams.

Find the head of teaching and learning for your school or course. Complain to them.

Complain to your head of school.

Basically complain to anyone and everyone. From my experience it tends to get more action if you're saying it to everyone.

Also don't just go complaining to them. Have a solution for them. Look at the timetables you have, talk to class mates, see can you work out a date between you all that suits better. If you have a valid solution to the problem they're far more likely to work with you.

I did this as class rep for my class this year and in the end it meant that myself and the other class rep had far more control over where our class went on clinical placement ( I know it's not exams but it's the same idea)

mloc

I know at least one science department has threatened to go in-house if the exam department doesn't sort things out quick. It seems the exam department's totalitarian like rule is pissing off more than the students.