Mid terms in 2 days

And so, the next boss fight in the game of life is arriving very soon. It's gonna be a toughie to get used to the method of answering. Because now it's more on subjective than objective. Say goodbye to objective questions. Anyway, objective and subjective questions have their own pros and cons, here are some of them:

Objective Questions:
Pros-

• The answer is given, along with fake ones, all you need to do is pick one
• It is very easy to "hentam", just close one eye, and eeni meeni minii mo
• It is not very uncommon (but it's not very often either) to see that the answer is already given somewhere. Sometimes, if you don't know how to answer a question, go on to the next one. If you're lucky, you might come across a question that tells you the answer to that previous question.
  
  Ok, here's an example:
  Q12: Event A happened on which year?
  A 1992
  B 1993
  C 1994
  D 1995
  
  ...
  Q25: Person A died during Event A in 1995. Why?
  A Jumped down a building
  B LOL
  C ROFDL (rolled on floor died laughing)
  D Because he died????
  
  From there, you can see that the answer for Q12 is D. Most of the time, it's not that obvious. So you've got to be observant.
  

Cons-

• Sometimes the answers are very close (sometimes, too close!). This can confuse the person who is answering the question.
• Choices are very limited.
• If you don't understand the words in the answer choices, oh, too bad.
  
• Pick the wrong one, go dig your own grave. Ahahaha, just kidding.

Subjective Questions
Pros-

• Usually, the questions does not limit your response. Therefore, you can actually write anything that's relevant enough to score (well, sometimes). As long as your answer looks good, meaningful and "professional", it should be okay.
• Your hentam-ing skills can be utilised fully here as your choices aren't limited, unlike the objective questions. If you think you can't answer a question, just write something stupid, but relevant.

Cons-

• Most of the time, these are open-ended questions, which are basically questions that require you to waste a few millilitres of ink. I classify this as one of the cons because, come on, you'll waste ink, and paper!
• There are no choices for you unlike the objective questions, so you rely solely on your creative and logical thinking.
  
• Some questions or marking schemes require you to follow a specific format, which is one of the leading causes for marks deduction.
• This should be one of the "Super-Cons" of Subjective Questions: The 3 cursed words - "Pada pendapat anda" (In your opinion)
  

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Now, here are some tips on how to HENTAM or TEMBAK like a professional marksman.

1. It's obvious that you should go for something logical. Use your common sense.
2. If you're answering an objective questions, look out for signs that enable you to cross out wrong choices:
   
   • Read the answers. If 3 of the answers look strangely similar, cross all of them out and pick the odd one out. Usually, this works. (I said usually, not always)
   • Look for clues from other questions that ask on the similar subject. It may help you to cross out irrelevant information.
3. If all else fail, go for either answer B or C (the middle choices). If I'm not mistaken, there some statistics that show that the either one of the middle answers happens to be the correct answer quite frequently. (Quite frequently doesn't necessarily mean always)
4. If the question you are answering is a subjective question, you still can look for clues from other similar questions.
   
5. Write something that sounds cool, professional and logical and not lame and horribly stupid. The main purpose of the subjective question is to test whether you understand what you have learnt. If you answer "professionally", the examiner will think that "Ahh, this kid here knows what he is trying to do" and blah blah blah. Sometimes, he may give you a tick. If not, just accept it.
   
   

Above all, take exams as normal lessons. If you get mistakes, just learn from them and don't repeat them. Somemore, common sense is actually a very powerful weapon. Use it wisely.

Good luck!