Taking final exams at Boğaziçi was an experience in itself. I knew that because I was in Europe, I would have to get used to a different way of doing things. I also realized that grade inflation in the US is rampant and that the exams in Turkey would probably be more difficult. I just wasn't exactly sure what to expect.
My Turkish exam was a joke. I finished it in about an hour and apparently made a 98 on it. I think she could have made it a lot harder but chose not to do so because many of the students didn't care whether they learned much Turkish or not. Many took the course because it was required.
My international law exam was challenging, but not impossible. The exam was taught by an American professor who teaches at American University Law School. It was also a good taste of what law school exams would be like. Basically the exam featured two hypotheticals where we had to analyze and explain two distinct legal issues in international law. We had to pretend as if we were the legal advisor to the chief of state as to whether or not we should recognize a country and what legal issues surround it.
Things started to go poorly with my next exam, Contemporary Political Economy of Turkey. I wish I remembered more about the exam (I am writing this post a year later). Needless to say, it was hard. The questions were so far out in left field from anything we read or discussed in the class. I basically felt as if I was writing for the sake of writing, hoping that if I wrote down enough stuff I would get credit for something. The exam was only supposed to take two hours. However, I think for short answers, 3 short essays and 2 long essays, 2 hours was a completely unreasonable expectation. I felt especially sorry for the majority of the class who did not speak English as their native language. Even for me, it was one of the hardest exams I ever took. Unfortunately, I didn't do that great either. I think my final exam grade was a 72 or so, which is probably the worst final exam grade I have ever earned. The others did not do much better from what they said. Basically the exam was brutal to the point where I felt it was not a fair exam.
The other exam that did not go well was my Turkish Politics Exam. This exam I can explain to you in more detail than the others due to the sheer ridiculousness of it. To this day, thinking about it still makes me angry (and that's saying something!). So before the exam, the professor told us that we would have 12 short to medium answer questions (6 coming from lecture and 6 coming from the reading). The format seemed reasonable and I wasn't too worried. This was also my last exam, so as you can imagine, I was looking forward to finishing it and putting the semester's work behind me.
I sat towards the back of the exam room. As the exam was being handed out, you could hear people gasping (this is never a good sign for an exam). I thought to myself, how bad can this be? It's only supposed to be a 200 level class. I received my exam and immediately understood why the others were so horrified. Instead of the expected short essay questions, there were three sections to the exam. The first section listed all of the election years in Turkish History from 1950 to 2007. The top of the paper asked us to identify the party that won the elections (which is a fairly reasonable request) and then to indicate the percentage by which they won the votes (as in 40% +, 30-40%, 20-30%, or less than 20%). That was the part that was quite a bit less reasonable in my opinion. Imagine having studied concepts and main ideas from Turkish politics and then receiving an exam like THAT. As if section 1 wasn't bad enough, section 2 was worse! A list of dates were given and we were asked to identify what major event in Turkish politics occurred on that date. Now this would be fairly simple if there were say 5-10 blanks reserved for major events. However, instead there were about 30 blanks and the distance between dates were something like April 1960, June 1960, December 1960. How the hell are we supposed to know what happened in such specific instructions?
The third section was reasonable and was the short essay question we had expected for the other two sections.
So why would a professor lie to us about the format of the test? I have a theory about it actually. From what many students have said, Professor Yilmaz is supposedly quite lazy. We also had a major group project (complete with a major paper). It was curious that all of my group members received the exact same final grade in the course (also apparently people in other groups did as well). He also allegedly does not like to give out many AAs (the equivalent of an A here in the US). I believe he only graded the projects and drafted a ridiculously hard exam in order to prevent any students from questioning their grade. I mean if the exam is so hard that everyone thinks they failed (and the exam is 50%), if they get a B, no one is going to say anything to the professor. He also asked for our projects to have the transcript of all interviews and a release form to be used for other studies by Bogazici professors. Is it possible that we were essentially doing his research for him through our projects? I will never know the answer to that for certain, but I really do believe he wrote an impossible exam in order to justify not having to read them (admittedly, grading 120 exams is a lot).
So despite my ups and downs my final results for my courses were decent overall.
Turkish Language AA (Equivalent to an A here in the US)
International Law AA
Contemporary Issues in World Politics AA
Contemporary Political Economy of Turkey BA (Equivalent to an A- here) (I would also admit that there was a nice little curve to help me there)
Turkish Politics BA
Although my grades abroad were the lowest of my entire 4 years at Emory, I was satisfied overall. The classes in Turkey were on the whole more difficult AND I definitely played/traveled more than I would during an average semester in the US. So ends the study part of my study abroad adventure.
I decided to extend my stay through the summer, rescheduling my flight to return on July 31st instead of mid June.
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