Ctrl+F on paper

Full of confidence, columnist Arendje walked into the room for her open-book exam.

Last month, I had an open-book exam. It had been about a year since I’d last sat one, and secretly, I was quite looking forward to it. An open-book exam means you don’t spend endless days cramming, desperately coming up with mnemonics that you’ll forget a week later, and generally feel much more relaxed.

What I hadn’t realised was that being allowed to use books in an exam is about as reassuring as being allowed to use Google Maps during a marathon. Open-book exams have the particular quality that everyone thinks they’re easier than a regular exam, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Phase one of my learning process is full of optimism. I don’t have to learn everything by heart, because I can look it up, so I feel somewhat relaxed. What characterises this phase is that I still have faith in myself, my prior knowledge and humanity in general.

Then comes phase two: preparation. During this phase, I slowly transform into an administrative assistant. I write detailed summaries, fill my books with colourful sticky notes and scribble all over the important pages with highlighters. Then I go over them again in another colour because it’s no longer clear what’s actually important. During this phase, I also tend to create complex systems to help me find all the material: summaries get a contents page, the contents page gets an index, and I even have an Excel spreadsheet with a key:

• Blue = concepts

• Green = definitions of the concepts

• Yellow = important

• Orange = very important

• Pink = extremely important

I have to admit I’m susceptible to this kind of system. Not because it actually helps, but because it feels as if you have the situation under control and are being productive. Learning a chapter takes hours; filling a chapter with sticky notes brings satisfaction in a matter of minutes.

Phase three is exam day. Full of confidence, I walk into the room with a very heavy bag. Around me, I see my fellow students building a kind of fortress out of summaries, loose sheets and books. The exam begins, I read the first question and… I don’t know the answer. No problem, I have all the information I could possibly need with me. As I flick through the pages, I think how nice it would be if books had a Ctrl+F function.

After ten minutes, I’ve looked through half a book, found four loose sticky notes that are no longer where they should be, and read the same page several times without understanding a thing. Perhaps it would have been more useful to try to understand the material than to highlight that one definition on page 36.

At the end of the exam, I hand in my answers and realise that I may have needed three pages from one of my books. But hey, at least I brought the rest too; you never know which three pages you’ll need.