Dear gair rhydd,
As the invigilator announced “pens down” at the end of my last ever university examination I was relieved that I’d finally caught up with what was starting to seem like the entire population of Cardiff students.
A significant proportion of my friends study courses such as English Literature and Journalism, the deadlines for which are now long passed. (Some deadlines were indeed the very first day of the exam period.) For several weeks I have been resisting the temptation to go out clubbing with them, despite much persuasion.
Just to clarify here, I am not in anyway ‘doing down’ their degree or comparing the workloads of such, I’m just annoyed because I feel like I’m missing out.
Having finally finished my exams I have barely a week left in Cardiff to squeeze in one final trip to Oceana, Tiger Tiger, Bounce, Revolution, Clwb Ifor Bach, Liquid, not to mention Fun Factory, Access All Areas and Come Play among many others.
It’s fairly clear to see that, disregarding the possibility of dividing an evening between three clubs or indeed being in two places at once, this isn’t really feasible.
My friends on the other hand could be described as getting a bit bored of nights out on the town now. Some have been doing little else for the past month.
So why do essay deadlines have to be so early? Couldn’t students be given the benefit of an extended deadlines which run into the exam period, and essentially would make me less insanely jealous about all the social gathering which are taking place without me.
I understand the issue with regard to the turnaround of marking these coursework assignments to a tight deadline. But, that said, examination papers (many of which contain essay-style questions) manage to get marked in time for the publication of results so I do struggle to see a difference here.
Sophie Williams, Cathays
