All about the comprehensive exam
I recently took an exam that required examinees to write an in-class essay on a predetermined topic. The aim was expected to be an informative and integrative recount (rather than a formal scientific paper) of what the examinee has learned and grasped about a major subdomain of communication and media studies. Examinees are required to elaborate on one of the following six topics: Cultural Anthropology, Interpersonal Communication, Visual Communication, Media Studies, Study of Popular Culture, Network Society Studies. All examinees were randomly assigned one of the above topics, and we got 90 minutes to write our essay in class, on a desktop computer, from scratch, using only the guidelines pertaining to each topic. We were provided with guidelines prior to the semester, which included a reference list of the materials (papers, chapters) pertaining to the given topic and a small number of questions indicating the major points to be covered in the essay.
However, because I did not begin studying until two weeks before the exam, I received a “good” grade. It was expected because I didn’t give a detailed enough essay on three topics, and my essay was relatively shorter than expected. I was assigned to write an essay on interpersonal communication that contained three subtopics to cover: nonverbal communication, the dramaturgy of interaction, and transactional analysis. To confess, I read specific chapters on two topics attentively: nonverbal communication and transactional analysis. Therefore, I am glad that I successfully passed this exam, which has five credits. The perks of this exam, which somehow stressed out most of us, were that I had to relearn and revise theoretical knowledge and ideologies that I had not given importance to knowing in the past. Now I see why anthropology was important in our study field.
Anthropological studies documented how culture and humans evolved, differed, and changed throughout the world, past and present. When I was reading about Victor Turner’s ideology of liminality, communitas, and the passage of time in the first year of my study, I did not comprehend it thoroughly, and I couldn’t make sense of why we had to learn anthropology at that time. Therefore, I had not given it much importance to acquire insights on this subject in the past. I can justify myself by saying that anthropological books were too academic, with lots of complex wording, and it was challenging to read them from the screen. With these complications in mind, I decided to use other means and sources to obtain a better understanding of the anthropological theoretical frame and ideology in sociology and philosophy. Informative videos on certain educational channels were much more articulate and explained things in depth in a simple way. For example, the School of Life’s playlists were extremely beneficial in understanding the intellectuals’ ideas on popular culture, modernity, and consumerism. A video about Theodor Adorno, who was closely associated with the Frankfurt School and Karl Marx, was insightful, and I understood how commodity fetishism affected popular culture and the media. The biographical videos of great thinkers, scholars, and researchers on the School of Life channel are worth watching.
I wish all the information we put in our brains had been permanently restored instead of erased. I cannot recall whether, while we were studying interpersonal communication, some of us gave a presentation about transactional analysis or whether the professor briefly mentioned it during the class. Knowing the three ego states, four types of transactions, and life positions was enlightening and aided my understanding of psychology. I realized that trying to change others except for our own shortcomings or not prioritizing working on ourselves first is a character trait of inner childishness. After reading certain chapters of “Games People Play. The Psychology of Human Relationships,” by Eric Berne, has strengthened my conviction that learning psychology is essential not only for my mental health but also for my profession. I’m the person who is promoting the benefits of YouTube as an efficient source of obtaining knowledge and a social networking platform by proving my thesis: I can confidently state that YouTube is not only for spending our time for entertainment, but also for learning and reinforcing understanding.
