Final Exam

I was approached by my less than intelligent English TA this morning before the start of our final exam and she said sarcastically, "So, Mr Iddiols, are you going to show us your knowledge today?" I tell you what, dear reader, I was a fucking hero. Answering questions, identifying passages, writing essays left, right, and centre. But I'll post a video of me eating fifty dollars if I get anywhere near a grade A. Why? Because they're stupid. The exam consisted of nothing more than a memory test. Fill in the blanks from this section of Milton's Aeropagitica. From which Shakespearean sonnet does this couplet come from. Who wrote the following about this? What's the name of the sequence from which this sonnet derives? Who could have thought of a more ridiculous test, not of understanding, but of memory. Sure, if I wanted to guarantee myself an A I could have spent the last fortnight reading and rereading the assigned texts over and over so I knew them by heart, but wherein lies the analysis, the profound study of close reading, context, atmosphere, metaphor, imagery? It's all left me rather depressed yet again by the state of the American higher education system. I've undergone four courses in English here at Arizona. In two of them I've been by far the best student in the class, receiving a resounding A at the end. However, in the other two I've been left by the wayside, somehow allowed to construe a C regardless of my equal efforts. It's a disgrace.