Midsem (Oral)
A closed-room oral exam at the semester's midpoint — no slides, no notes, just you, a marker, and whatever you can say with a straight face
Due: 29 March 2027 · Weight: 30%
The exact angle you’ll be pushed on is decided and released at the last minute, per course policy — the format is fixed a semester in advance; the specific question is not.
The brief#
Say something for ten minutes about the first half of this course, and keep saying it while someone tries to find the seam.
The midsem oral is the first real test of whether “confident delivery” is a skill you have or a bit you were doing. There’s no brief to point at and no document to hand in — the exam is the thing you say, live, in the room.
What you submit#
Nothing in advance. You show up and talk. Bring whatever mental scaffolding gets you through ten minutes of direct questioning; nothing physical is checked at the door.
This is marked holistically — see above — because a rubric can’t watch you recover from a bad answer, only whether you did.
The spec
The brief poses the problem and leaves room for a response. The spec is the fixed part: what a marker checks. Some lines can be checked mechanically; the rest call for judgement.
- you attend, at the assigned time, and stay for the whole slot
- you can defend at least one claim from weeks 1–5 when it is pushed on
- you do not go silent when asked a question you don't have an answer for
How it is marked
Marked on the performance, not a transcript — whether you can hold a position under direct questioning, recover cleanly when a claim gets picked apart, and keep talking without ever visibly running out of material. Correctness is welcome but not required to pass.