Schols is unpleasant. Though this is something of an uninteresting truism to anyone strolling through the Arts Block, the sentence scarcely makes grammatical sense outside of Trinity (surely it’s “Schols are unpleasant”?). The affectionate name for this set of gruelling exams that are set to start in this new year does little to obscure the unpleasant reality facing many hopeful senior freshmen students who are currently preparing themselves.
For those who succeeded in these exams at the start of this year, the Christmas break is bound to bring confused flashbacks to mind that contrast significantly with this year. Stranger than the completely reversed ratio of mince pies to hours spent in the library, though, is probably the role of adviser that is thrust upon them. Suddenly, you become the one who is turned to for advice and who gives talks, as someone who cracked the mysterious code the year previously. It’s impossible not to feel a touch of “imposter syndrome”, and feel very much ill at ease with the prospect of sharing “expertise” on a set of exams that took place almost a year ago, and that you immediately tried to forget once they finished, only to have their memory come rushing back in a whirlwind of praise and pretension on Trinity Monday in April.
And, I suppose, there is not much advice anyone can give that is applicable to those not sitting Schols in the same course. All that can really be said is that anyone who’s decided to give them a go should continue to work hard at it, read widely, practice exam questions and definitely, definitely do not give up on them at this stage. Far too much time and effort has been invested in them at this point not to have some chance of succeeding, a chance you will deprive yourself of if you don’t actually sit the exam.
This advice is, however, replete with clichés and repetition. Anyone could have told a prospective scholar all of that and, in all likelihood, they already have. In lieu of advice, sympathy might be better. Not the glib, passing sympathy that acknowledges nothing beyond the universal truth that “schols is unpleasant”, but serious sympathy, researched sympathy, sympathy that recognises the peculiar constellation of factors that is inflicting torture on this year’s prospective Scholars.
Schols isn’t only something that impinges on your life in December, with a lot of the reading lists and extra materials being circulated in September before the teaching term begins
The first of these is undoubtedly the timing of the exams. The hour of reckoning comes in the first week of the new year, meaning that the Christmas immediately before it is ever so slightly ruined. It means that even if you didn’t have those notes out on the table in front of you over dinner on Christmas Day, you probably felt deeply and irrationally guilty about it. One year at Trinity is enough to teach students that Christmas exams are an obscure form of torture that quite simply should not exist, and leave them blissfully unaware that they are the norm in most Irish universities. Prospective scholars are battling an instinct that has been conditioned in them by the Trinity experience. It is difficult to say how these exams will be accommodated with the College’s plans to introduce Christmas exams for all students in 2018/19. Requiring students to sit both would definitely take the torture to new heights.
However, the timing of the exams is also a source of pain in a broader sense. Schols isn’t only something that impinges on your life in December, with a lot of the reading lists and extra materials being circulated in September before the teaching term begins. Obviously, they’re exams that require a lot of preparation, long before the fateful entry to the exam hall. The temptation to make a hermit of yourself starts very early in the year, particularly given that there is often a greater number of people at that point in the year intending to sit Schols, injecting a silently competitive edge to the challenge. That first term of second year is a time when students can really start to play a more active role in societies as they return to college for the first time after outgrowing their time as fresher. Committing yourself to an even more severe academic workload feels like cutting yourself off from a lot of valuable and more enjoyable experiences.
You feel as though you are promoting yourself as the class genius. That kind of feeling makes the prospect of not getting Schols seem even more painful
The nature of the exams also marks a significant divergence with the norm. Both the end of year exams and the Leaving Certificate, which students sitting Schols will have already been exposed to, are both trying to place people on a spectrum and rank performance from highest to lowest, with this being the reason behind the range of grading bands. A1s, A2s, B1s, B2s, firsts, two-ones and all the rest. Schols preserves the formula of these grading bands, with candidates required to achieve an average of at least 70 per cent, though no paper can drop below 65 per cent. The reality, however, is that the grading system has to be applied differently for Schols, rather than trying to position people along a continuous spectrum – the exams are designed to distinguish a small few from everyone else. The specifics of who comes close and exactly how close they came simply is not the focus of the marking scheme. Lecturers are not aiming, as they are in other exams, to give all students the essentials to pass. Because of this, familiar techniques that you might learn to survive a bad exam or make the most of a less-than-ideal paper probably aren’t as helpful as they might otherwise be. How high the bar is set also seems to change disconcertingly. While only 50 scholars were elected in 2016, 67 made the grade the year previously. In 2014, 99 were elected.
However, the most frustrating aspect of Schols is undoubtedly the fact that it is voluntary. Nobody has to put themselves through it, and that means that everyone has to make their own decision about whether they are willing to endure it. That decision reveals itself as just another thing to agonise over in the weeks as the exams approach. As only a minority will ever sit the exam and a smaller minority still will actually reap the benefits, making the decision to pursue them feels like a massive statement of self-endorsement, self-endorsement which can feel a lot like narcissistic self-delusion when you are imprisoned in the Berkeley. You feel as though you are promoting yourself as the class genius. That kind of feeling makes the prospect of not getting Schols seem even more painful. Through the stressed out, bleary eyes of someone on the eve of the Schol exams, trying and failing would be the mark of an imposter. Somebody enamoured with scholarly pretension but without the dedication and brains to back it up.
This is obviously an irrational and viciously self-effacing line of thinking, but one that is unlikely to be entirely alien to this year’s prospective Scholars as they have opportunity to think of little beyond the exams in recent days. Sitting the exams is a mark of bravery and dedication whether you get that elusive first or not. Any exam that holds itself out as a test of the exceptional, is one in which there is no shame in not getting top marks. There are innumerable very well prepared, intelligent and excellent people who just will not get schols. Scholars are chosen on the basis of a single set of exams, a tradition laughing in the face of modern trends in education towards continuous assessment. Luck inevitably has a part to play if you want to award a prize based on nine hours of feverish scribbling, and that means brilliant people are going to miss out. And while this may offer little consolation to someone considering just how they will cope in that first exam, and while this sounds a little bit too much like “participation is all that counts” and other stifling aphorisms that echo primary school sports days, it is true that only very impressively determined people are going to try. It’s something worth keeping in mind in the stressful days head.
It is true that only very impressively determined people are going to try. It’s something worth keeping in mind in the stressful days head
Schols is unpleasant. But it is unpleasant in a nefarious and multi-faceted way. It is a psychological and academic challenge for the connoisseur that’s probably going to drive you insane to the point that an article you read while procrastinating is unlikely to totally rebalance your stressed worldview and take away all of the pressure. But it’s a challenge that despite all of that, is definitely worth a go. The prize of not only having no fees due to the College, but expecting cash, accommodation and free meals from Trinity for the next five years is a frighteningly generous one, and one that’s obviously going to be fiercely contested. It’s worth giving up a term for, but no more that.
