My grade 12 English (University) teacher is insane.
For our mid-term exam we had to write an academic essay on one of the short stories we read, citing what theories from Northrop Frye's The Educated Imagination were present in that story. In one period. I somehow managed to finish, but most of the class did not, and subsequently failed or did quite poorly.
Now, for our final exam today, we had a similar task. Except this time we had to write an essay comparing Andrew Miller's essay, Tragedy and the Common Man to two texts; Robertson Davies' Fifth Business, Hamlet, or one of the short stories we read during the semester, while also citing how some of Northrop Frye's theories apply. We had one day to read Miller's essay, prepare quotes, and write notes (on a sheet of paper she would collect at the end of the period). So, in this one period she expected us to create an outline for our each paragraph of our essay, and in my case look through The Educated Imagination, Fifth Business, The Scarlet Ibis, and Tragedy and the Common Man for suitable quotes. Then the next day for writing the essay. What made this worse, besides the fact that Tragedy and the Common Man is a much harder piece of literature to understand in the short amount of time given (75 minutes; much of that had to be dedicated to finding quotes however. But even so, I was unable to find enough, since surprise; I didn't fully understand the essay after reading it once!), was that she did not allow us to take the texts, or our sheet home with us; something she did allow us for our mid-term exam.
I managed to finish the introduction, two body paragraphs, and a very poor start to my third paragraph. Like those who didn't complete the mid-term essay, I will lose a substantial amount of marks for not completing it, and my final mark for the course will likely go down. This is not what I am concerned with though; it is the impossible task she gave us that irritates me. It isn't that I
couldn't write the essay, there was many moments between my frantic scribbling upon the page that I had great ideas of what to write, but excluded it for the sake of brevity.
tl;dr: For my English exam I had to write an academic essay comparing four complex pieces of literature in
one period, after only being allotted one period to takes notes, which I was not allowed to take home for the night.