My Public Speaking teacher has announced that our midterm will take the form of an oral exam. She gave us a list of 15 short-essay questions that we will draw from when we come to class Friday. We will each draw one and be given 5 minutes to prepare. We will then each give a 2-minute oral essay answering the question.

I'm less than thrilled about this new development, partially because it is an effective way to force me to study everything, but more because I do well on written/Scantron tests. I suspect I don't do as well on oral ones.

I received a 89% (B) on my first (and only) speech so far this semester because my delivery is lacking. It was a Cultural Analysis speech on the Orange Revolution and was well-written and massively researched, but I talked too fast (unsurprising since the time limit was way too short for the topic). I finished with less than 30 seconds to spare.

Anyways, since I already have a B in the class, I'm not thrilled about this extremely subjective exam. I emailed her asking if it is possible to score 100% on the exam. It's been my personal experience that teachers never give perfect scores for this kind of thing…my most recent paper from another class received a 99 with lots of positive annotations and no mention of what I could have done to improve.

Anyone else ever taken oral exams like this?

P.S. Please don't take this as an anti-school or anti-teacher rant. I love college; there are just a few aspects that I find annoying.

P.P.S. As I was drafting this blog, she replied, "If you answer your question accurately and communicate with clarity, concision, and conversationality [if you get a perfect score]."

My hopes have been renewed!