29th October: The Modern exam

So, I just finished the Modern exam.

Disclaimer: Incoherency may ensue due to post-exam Jess reflecting on her exam.

Before the exam, it was kind of strange but I was panicking because I thought I couldn't possibly remember all my notes in their greater than 88 page totality, all the dates, all the people, all the German names (which were seriously the death of me...), all the stuff that HAPPENED. Even the ideas, I struggled to keep in my head that I felt like as soon as I read them and tried to recount them back to myself they would just quickly dissipate into thin air and it...was yeah, difficult. Other reasons why I was panicking was also a result of:
a. An overwhelming sense of insufficient preparation
b. The full extent of the course
c. Did I mention insufficient preparation?

I basically did not get a chance to revise WWI and Albert Speer and Germany much at all until yesterday. Yeah, that's how bad it was. I was mainly focusing on finishing up my summary notes Pacific Conflict and reconsolidating my knowledge for that because I found it the most confusing topic out of all of them. Which is is kind of frustrating as I didn't even end up finishing the question on it which was actually on something I DID know which was the role of British and US policy from 1937-41 that caused the outbreak of the Pacific war....blah, so when I look back at it now it does feel kind of futile. Like, I didn't even write about anything into the Course of the Pacific War or reasons for the end of the defeat...But I guess, still, it helped me feel a larger sense of preparation for the exam in that if they didn't ask a Pacific tensions question, I would be able to write something about it unlike in the trial where I had only the choice between a turning points question and a effect of the war on civilians in occupied territories. And back then since I didn't know crap about any of the turning points let alone why the battle of Coral Sea was significant as a turning point in the Pacific War and I had a vague understanding of impact on civilians so I did that.

Anyway, so how I went in the exam- a little caught off guard by the Home front questions in WWI as I hadn't really revised sufficiently for it however I put my best foot forward anyway and did my best to answer the 8 mark question which in hindsight, may have been completely WRONG as I confused the changed attitudes in the home fronts in Germany and Britain to changed soldiers' attitudes which is in the War on the Western front dot point that I am most familiar with..blah. I should have mentioned things like the British naval blockade on Germany and German U-Boat campaign from 1917 and the inefficiency of German war administration compared to British administration and ugh..fail. I think I did okay for the Germany question where I picked the transition question which required an assessment of the extent to which Hitler coming into power was a result of lack of opposition. I linked his coming to power to the collapse of the Weimar democracy and voila, Weimar question! Yeah..I'm not sure if that was allowed but it made sense at the time...and there was no other way I could have incorporated the dot points now that I think about it UNLESS I linked it with Weimar. I hope it was okay because yeah, I didn't really feel confident enough about Nazi foreign policy to do the other question..yeah, insufficient preparation strikes again. The personality question was alright and my main issue was really a. lack of time and b. lack of practice in forming a coherent argument about the controversy of Speer's life. Because in the end, it was not lack of content that disappointed me like I thought it would but rather...insufficient preparation. Ah, I should have practiced more personality questions. So I ended up just tossing in all I knew about Speer without really connecting it as I was feeling the pressure of time constraints at that point and I hadn't even started the Pacific War question yet. Also I promptly forgot most of my historians' names so I ended up..writing similar sounding names in the exam. Blah.

It was also strange because while I was writing my response to the Germany section it struck me as very cool that I was being examined on such an interesting topic of how a democracy transforms into a dictatorship in the case study of the Weimar Republic collapse into the arguably, totalitarian state of Nazi Germany. Which filled me with a vague sense of sadness of the finality of doing a history exam as I have no intentions of continuing studying history at an academic level in university. (This may sound slightly paradoxical but yeah, my stress in preparing for such an essay, information-overload based subject highlighted this to me, history is interesting but study of the humanities at academic standards is just not for me, I would prefer the more logical nature of completing maths sets)

So yeah, that's how I did the Modern exam. I was hoping for 80+ but I feel like it all will be very much based on the examiner's immense kindness to get above 80....so much incoherence in the Personality section. And the Pacific section was incomplete. WW1 and Germany- hopefully ok.