It has been almost three weeks since the start of the semester. Two weeks ago, I took the exemption exam for Python. Since it was an elective course, a score of 60 would be considered a pass. I didn't spend too much time studying for the exam because there was no syllabus provided, so I didn't know what to expect. Additionally, I had been focusing most of my time on learning full-stack development with Node.js.
Despite these circumstances, I still decided to take the exam. There were many classmates in the room who were also taking the same subject. I glanced at their textbooks and realized that they were using last year's edition (we have a new edition this year). It seemed like they were well-prepared, probably with the help of senior students. I felt a bit discouraged at that moment, thinking that my chances of passing were slim. However, since I was already there, I thought I might as well give it a try. The person sitting behind me was also taking the exam without any prior knowledge of what would be tested.
When the exam papers were handed out, the first section was multiple-choice questions, which were not too difficult. There were a few questions about definitions, and I couldn't answer some related to CSV because I had never used it before. I only knew the general format of CSV. Overall, the multiple-choice section was manageable. The next section was fill in the blanks. I struggled with the first question, which was about the turtle graphics library. I had never used it before and it wasn't covered in the new textbook. Later, I searched for last year's textbook and found that it was mentioned in the earlier chapters. The rest of the exam was not too challenging. The longer coding questions didn't give me much trouble because I couldn't verify the correctness of the output since I'm not a human interpreter. I could only ensure that there were no syntax errors. Writing code by hand was not very user-friendly, especially when it came to indentation. Python is a language that pays special attention to formatting. The last question was worth either 15 or 25 points (I can't remember), and it involved writing code to perform word statistics using a library called jieba. I had no idea how to use it, so I just wrote something and submitted my exam.
In the end, this exam was originally an open-book exam, but I ended up treating it as a closed-book exam because there was only one 3-point definition in the book. I scored 70 points, which translates to a GPA of 2.0. My overall GPA for all courses is 3.49->3.35. Haha, it would have been better to not pass at all, better to not take the exam. Better to not take the exam. Better to not take the exam.