College, as I have discovered it to be within my short freshman year, is a place in which people seem to shuffle into their own different worlds. People are free to be who they want to be and are all trying to discover what really interests them and what it is they want to major in. I've noticed many differences and many trends among majors. For example, an English major is bound to be different than an Engineering major. Additionally, one trend I have picked up on and have personally witnessed is the uniqueness of finals that English majors,Philosophy majors, and the humanities tend to have.
The college I go to tends to have finals that are tests, for the most part. However, for an English major, studying for finals is not the same at all. This is because the average English major is not actually studying all that much. Instead, I reckon the average English major is hammering home essay outlines and reading the relevant literature for their final essay. For people like me, the English major is a sort of dream come true. Not being pressured by a bell and being able to induce your own creativity within a piece. What else could I ask for? Essays even provide room for you to half-ass your way to a decent grade. English majors, or any major who has final essays, is given the privilege of writing and creating abstract ideas and answers to prompts: something that is certainly more bullshitable than taking a multiple choice test. On the plus side, if BSing things wasn't already a positive for you, the fact that one gets to think abstractly and differently for a final is sort of relieving.
Anyone who has graduated from high school and has gone through the dread that can be finals. You are going to have tests and they are going to be long and the studying is going to be nocuous. I remember the one privilege I ever got was Honors English, in which I had to write an essay for my test. Some people prefer to write essays than take tests; furthermore, some people rather spend a lot of time outlining and creating a masterful essay for their final than take a 100-question test.
By no means is this an essay meant to demean the entire finals testing stratagem. There are a number of useful and necessary skills that are gained only through taking tests, and it is for this reason that I recommend any individual in college to not avoid tests, even if they really hate it. But for all of you who are looking to write more essays for finals than take tests, you should look to the more literary-based (humanities) disciplines like Philosophy or English rather than Chemistry or Engineering. Pretty obvious.
I would say, however, that the same applies vice versa. That bullshitting, as I mentioned earlier, is only a detriment to one's creative processes and ability to write to the best of their ability. Finals, therefore, is a good time for people who are more comfortable with taking tests to brush up on their writing skills and to learn and work on their outlining abilities. Thus I would argue that everyone should aim to take at least one writing course in college, but that is a whole new topic per se. The real idea I have in mind is just that writing essays is something that is really frequently done in the literature-based, English, majors. This even applies to their finals and is not something to be afraid of nor to take advantage of. Like was mentioned afore, college is not a time for people to just confine themselves to one school of learning, but to open themselves to multiple so that he or she may better discover what it is he or she really wants to learn.
