Irritating Assessments and your disjointed system

Why do you want to continually assess me? Yes, I have paid the fees to you so that you teach me something so that I will reach somewhere in life. But why do you want to assess me? That too continuously? Can't I reach where I have planned to get in future in the place that is comfortable to me? Or do you want to label me dumb so that the ones who get higher marks than me are smarter? In what way?

If your vision is excellence, then please do realise that your excellence is not my excellence. What you have set for yourself should not be my life's standard or benchmark. That is a very authoritarian stance and you remind me of USA now - for all the policing that you are doing.

When I look back to the semester that has just passed, I am beginning to get depressed (for certain things). Half my time went in filling up pages of information which did no good to me. I was marked when I was not prepared for it. I was trying to complete assignments which gave me marks for how much I did, but not for how much I understood in what the topic was. Still I am not able to apply what I learn from those Continually Irritating Assessmant methods. It is very unscientific or perhaps too scientific. There is absolutely no qualitative analysis on how well I am on my way to become a Clinical Psychologist. That is where you lose the point. That is where you become just a scaling machine. A huge institution that measures a small part of me and labels the result as ME. You're missing other areas and aspects of my life. I do not want your label. I am just a student who is interested in learning Psychology and not a machine that wants to churn out pages of written or printed material full of last minute reading and copied information (because there were 3 more of the same assigments to do). I want to be a Psychologist, not a quantitatively smart machine who is able to march to the drumming of the existing system which thinks it has done the smartest thing by adopting assessment methods of some American University where the representatives happened to visit during their world tours. I am not any better when I get out of this college because I was continually assessed. Can we call it Surveillance? It is surveillance ( did you know abouth the secret Cameras?).

Even the teachers don't know why they are marking us for anything and everything. A teacher once threw her arms in the air remarking , "How else will I assess you?", to a protest by the students on the way she had decided to assess us for a PRACTICUMS. Can you believe that? A matter where the teacher should train us to get better at assesssments and diagnosis, we are being assessed continuously? For what happiness? Aren't we supposes to demonstate our abilities in the end , once we have learned the subtleties of the matter, instead of while we are learning something for the first time?
Where is Excellence there? It is more of a quantitative measure then. Student ABC is a smart because he/she has scored 99% on the report card. So you are stamped with the Institutions brand and sent out into the world to prove your excellence.

Numbers and figures don't make you excellent. To become excellent and at the same time, humble and of service to others there needs to be overall growth. And no my dear intitution (OR ESTABLISHMENT), I don't want you to give me overall growth which you have labelled into a a sexy brand called Holistic Development. I am not ready to take all the rubbish that you give me in the form a of a prescription to ensure overall growth - Library, Games facilities (for which we never get time to participate), or institutional cultural events... I don't want you for some time in my life. I certAINLY DON'T WANT YOU 24 HOURS A DAY. Don't play nosy parker and be every where. I want to develop myself in the way I think suits me, not the way you think suits me. I am unique. I am an individual. I paid you money so that I become a better person. So donn't be over concerned. It was my choice and it was kind of you to admit me. Agreed. But my life is in my hands and God's. I want to become what I want to become. I want to read.I want to take a walk without a tensed mind all the time. I want to watch TV for sometime. I want to read the news paper and the journals which you have provided in the Library. I want to meet friends in the interval time and have lunch with them at the break. And I don't want you to encroach upon my interval time and try to burst it out by giving more things which you think will make my life better. Because it does not. You are stuffing me up. I am choking and I want fresh air. Can you give me fresh air? That's all I am asking for. You will incur no expense for that, I assure you. Thanks for giving me every facility and making my money worth, but STAY AWAY from treating me like a baby and feeding me baby food every other minute. Give some more sense to our teachers and DE-SYSTEMISE them from the way you want the system to work. Please un-brainwash them from your ideology. Allow them to think for themselves and stop gettnig crazy ideas to make our life more miserable. I exhort you to continue believing in your ideals. I believe in them too. But your method does not suit mine or even that of the society. You are not any better than any other human being so be humble about it please.

I want a wave of change here. A change that will bring more sense into the system. Something that would make the sytem more human and habitable, rather than some foreign garbage that contradicts your mission and vision and clouds up your mind so much that you don't see that in actuality, you are killing the human beings in your students, who feel trapped.