Never underestimate the multiple-choice quiz. At least not when you are in a foreign country. Here is a story for you that will illustrate my point exactly. The event I'm going to describe actually happened last week Wednesday, but I figure telling a story late is better than never, and this one fits nicely under the "cross-cultural experience" category.
On the third day of my shiny new Molecular Development class, we had a quiz over basic cell biology material that we reviewed the first two days of class. The quiz was going to be 16 questions long, multiple choice. No big deal, right?
Wrong.
The lab assistants came in to the classroom and distributed the quizzes to everyone. I put my name on the top without thinking, looked down at the first question, and realized I couldn't read any of it. While our lectures are given in English...
...this quiz was in Dutch.
Oops. Miscommunication there between the professor and the lab instructors who wrote the quiz. The rest of the Dutch students began to take the quiz with no problems (actually, it was probably and advantage for them to have the quiz in Dutch!), but Adam and I...well, what to do? This was a short quiz that we only had half an hour to take. There was no time for someone to go translate the quiz. Only one thing could be done. We were off to our professor's office.
Lucky for me, I didn't fully realize on the way to Prof. Koes' office what I was in store for, because I don't remember dreading the walk there. If I had known what was coming, I would have been waaaaaaay more nervous. Really.
We got to our prof's office, and the lab instructor yelled at him for a bit about the quiz-should-be-in-English confusion. Then she left. It was soon realized among Prof. Koes, Adam, and myself that Adam and I could not exactly take the quiz at the same time. Now Adam knows some Dutch, which was unfortunate for him at this moment because it meant he was sent to another room to fend for himself and try take the quiz as best he could. Not very fun. Meanwhile, I was going to take the quiz in Koes' office after he translated the questions for me.
He did get me some coffee at this point. That was nice. It helped a little.
But, really, let me explain this process to you. Koes would translate question X for me, all well and good. Then he would translate answer A. I would pause and not say anything (is that the right answer???), and then he would ask if I wanted to hear the next answer. Um, yes please. We'd make our way through all of the multiple choice options, and then there would be that waiting moment again...with me thinking something like this:
"answer the question...answer the question...GET THE RIGHT ANSWER...answer the question..."
Finally, I would circle an answer and wait. Hopefully (and thankfully, most of the time) I would hear:
"Good choice. That was the right one."
But some of the time, it would be:
"You shouldn't have chosen that one."
Drat. I guess that's one good thing about taking a quiz with the professor able to see everything you do. You get immediate results. I knew when I walked out of that office what my grade was.
But, boy, what a strange way to get through sixteen questions. I now fully appreciate taking a test at a desk by yourself, where you can mull over answers as long as you want and be unprepared for the test with the comfort that your professor won't find out that you were unprepared for at least a few hours, maybe days. And, thanks to the clarification this situation achieved between lab instructors and professor, I trust that our future exams in the class will all be in English, the only language that I, the poor foreign monolingual student, can understand. The prof-over-the-shoulder quiz will be a one-time occurrence, my friends.
At least I hope so.
hahahaaa...great
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