Overall, the exam was a fun one to write. It was the kind that doesn’t prompt you to word-vomit on the page, but rather the type to make you think about the question. It was one of those exams that you walk away from, continuing to think about the problems given to you and I think those are one of the best exams you can write. They not only test you on what you know, but also prompt you to continuing learning things you don’t.

In that sense, I felt the exam was great for discussing in a group setting. It was a question that had many avenues for discussion, and I liked that it was a problem that could be interpreted in many different ways. While I doubt anyone will ever say “I don’t want to have the chance to improve my mark by discussing my answer with my classmates at no risk to my previously attained marks”, I would still like to reiterate how much I liked the group portion of the exam.

I find I really benefit from ‘solidifying’ my answers with my friends. I like hearing other opinions that back up my initial ideas, because it gives me confidence and helps me confirm that the way I approached the question is on the right track. I also like hearing rebuttals and disagreements with my models because they are often ones I would have never thought of. With each person comes a different perspective and I think it is crucial to learn that it’s never really possible to have all perspectives from a single person. The idea that you can discuss, refute, or disagree on data or ideas are reminiscent of what it is like in real life. Real data will likely never be perfectly clear and any proposed model will always have skeptics– and I believe that the group portion of the exam gives us an opportunity to learn how to deal with such hurdles or doubts in a way that can be constructive to our own work. In truth, I am not sure if our my answer improved in the group portion, but I did feel like I had a lot more to ‘think’ about after leaving the second part of the exam. Interestingly, I actually felt more ‘unsure’ about our answer after the group portion, and ended up coming up with other models in my head afterward by myself.

I felt the weakest point in my individual answer was explaining the mechanism by which the insulator blocked Hb activity, and my concern was that in the group portion, we still hadn’t really addressed this. One of my group members actually pointed this out to us, but we ran out of time and only managed to scribble something down in haste. It was this comment that prompted me to continue thinking about the question after the exam was over. I had a few new ideas pop into my head about how the mechanism might actually work, and I wish I had thought of them during the group portion. Oh well! I suppose there is always next time.