masterme

It eventually degrades into game theory where you're trying to predict how your classmates are going to answer the questions. If you play it too safe and only answer questions you are 100% confident in, you might not get a lot of marks. But you won't lose any marks either. If you friends play it more dangerously and answer questions they are 70% confident in, they could either get all those wrong (boosting your mark) or get them all right (lowering your mark).

On the one hand it's fascating. Yet on the other, it's absolutely terrifying.

The problem is the exam structure. The first half is written questions, but typically accounts for somewhere between 50% and 66% of the exam. The remainder is negative marking MCQs. Therefore, you can either get 100% on the first half and 0% of the second half or get relatively high marks in both.

The MCQs are normalized according to some normal distribution. Therefore, the worst you can get is 0. However, if you score > 0, but you get the lowest mark in the class, you receive 0 marks. To make matters worse, much of the questions are written in such a way that, if you have in-depth knowledge of the subject area, the questions become ambigious, because the examiner might not have fully considered all the ways in which the true/false statement can be interpreted or reasoned (I think this would require some kind of perfect human being?). In effect: mess up on the MCQ's and you're toast.

Hope that makes sense!

> You're not generally required to take any specific course as a graduate student. When you come back, take classes that interest you, not what you require to pass the exams.

Sadly, all my classes are compulsary, except one, which we get to choose. They're also really interesting, in a field I love, and I've enjoyed them thoroughly. What has been a real struggle is the work load. I've effectively worked 10 hours a day, 7 days a week for the past 8 months (with some time off at Christmas). At this stage, I am mentally and physically exhausted.

> I damn near committed suicide. The depression lasted for three years. It was a struggle just to survive.

I'm very sorry to hear that. If I am honest, depression is not really something I have ever suffered from or something I ever felt: something that I am very grateful for.