strategies for oral exams
1. Steal from Geoff Sirc's Funeral Ceremony of the Anti-Proces II: A happening for CCCC and prepare six answers for the first six questions asked, regardless of what they are:
- That is a very good question. I should not want to spoil it with an answer.
- My head wants to ache.
- Had you heard Marya Freund last April in Palermo singing Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, I doubt whether you would ask that question.
- According to the Farmers’s Almanac, this is False Spring.
- Please repeat the question...
And again...
And again... - I have no more answers.
2. Alternatively, one may adopt the advice found in one’s fortune cookie:
Comments
I recommend the Donald Rumsfeld method. If you don't hear the question you want, just ask it of yourself. (I caught myself doing this the other day, when annoyed with my GF.)
Posted by: susansinclair | December 7, 2006 7:38 PM
Actually, that first comment is not such a bad strategy for orals. At least, it wasn't at my institution. For me, at least, the oral exams were all about finding out whether you could control a conversation with a group of senior academics. It did very little to test my knowledge per se. So part of what they were looking for, I am convinced, was whether I could give answers to my own questions, no matter what they asked me, without it feeling like I was ignoring them.
Posted by: Scrivener | December 13, 2006 7:38 PM