Let's talk about writing competancy

Here at our lovely Ball State, we have this real neat thing that all students have to take. It's called the writing competency exam. As one might expect from the title, it is an exam to test how competent one is at writing.


THIS IS THE STUPIDEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE

I cannot emphasis enough how angry this thing makes me. Let's look at the official description given by the Ball State website:

Click for enlarged view

Let me just reiterate what that says. You have to pass both ENG 103 and ENG 104 in order to be eligible for this exam. You must pass this exam to graduate.

Am I the only one who sees an issue with this? Both ENG 103 and ENG 104 are English classes specifically designed to teach you how to write well in an academic fashion. So you have to pass these two classes that essentially say "Hey! This person knows how to write!" in order to take an exam to prove you know how to write? That would be like me having to take a driving exam in order to take a driving exam. It's idiocy.




That's ASSUMING you somehow managed to make it to college without the ability to write a decent paper. Are Ball State's standards for their potential students really so low that they need to retest their ability to write?

It gets worse.

There is no spellcheck available during the exam. Exactly what possible reason is there for this? Do you remember back in math class, when you got to algebra, and they let you use calculators during the tests? Do you want to know why? Because you've proven you can do arithmetic by getting to an algebra class. That's not the point of the class. The point is for you to learn algebraic formulas and how to apply them to problems. Calculators are merely tools to help you do this quicker and more accurately.

That is exactly what spellcheck is to writing. By GETTING TO COLLEGE, there is the implication that I know how to spell fairly well. Spellcheck makes sure I don't make stupid mistakes while typing quickly. Let's look at it another way: in what POSSIBLE scenario will I be writing something important where I WILL NOT have some form of spellcheck available to me? In "real life" no one is going to stop me. Unless the point of this exam is to test my spelling (which I am told it is not), then I do not see the need to remove spellcheck, other than to piss me off.

Wound, meet salt.

If this wasn't aggravating enough, I only need to look at the title of my major to set myself off in another apoplexy. I'm a creative writing major. A creative writing major. I'm in a major about writing, but Ball State somehow still feels the need to force me to take some foolish exam to prove I can write.

Wait, there's more.

Now there is no solid proof of this, only second hand stories, the whispers of friends-of-friends, but word on the street is that you can fail by writing too well. That's right. 4.0 students are failing this exam. Why? Because the graders belief these intelligent young men and women somehow found the prompt before hand and managed to prepare an essay ahead of time. So you have to know how to write, but you can't know too much about writing, or you'll fail. This is just so messed up.

I quit.