Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Useless Reading List

In preperation for the exam, we were given a 10 page, single spaced, double sided reading list sorted by topic (Democracy, Political Economy, Accountability, etc). We spent the majority of the summer hacking our way through this list - dividing up readings amongst the four of us and creating summaries for everyone. Now, of course we knew that "the list was not complete", they made sure to repeat that disclaimer. However, I have been shocked over the last view days as I have run into questions from previous exams that not one single reading on that entire reading list applied to, especially methods questions. I guess we should have taken their disclaimer more seriously.

It leaves me in the awkward position of researching topics 10 days before the exam, when I should writing practice essays or gathering reading summaries into question-based groupings. Not that its that bad, I mean, I think I prefer researching topics to the other things I should be doing, but if these previous questions are so far off the reading list, who knows what might be on the exam this year. Cross your fingers.

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