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Lately it seems worse.

I loved them- but i could write sentences, paragraphs and generally studied before tests- maybe if I bought my homework or just stole it- I might have other feelings about it all.

Blue books were fine, I still have my handwritten history exams from the 1990s.

Ah, memories of 12-blue-book finals It does cramp the hand but you get used to it

Bring back cursive too. AI can barely do block printing.

"Back in my day..." We hated the electronic exam system when we were in college. It was a miserable, finicky, user-unfriendly tide of idiosyncrasies and bullshit. Bring on the Blue Books and hand cramps and ink smudges. At least the person grading is going to be a human being.

I heartily agree and heartily disagree! Fuck the WSJ and fuck AI. But it's also the case that blue book exams are loathsome, fearful, and utterly unreal. Out in the real world, graduates will have to write--and write for themselves and in their own voice. A compromise? Open-note blue book exams.

Also in the 90s. Definitely remember purchasing blue books. I mean it was just a cost of going to school same as textbooks (you could buy used and sell them back at nearly no loss), pens, pencils, binders, food, apartment, and so on. Oh, you were being sarcastic and I missed it. Shame on me.

Apparently the 80s were the right decade to go to college. Free test books!

And ‘10s (I went back and got my bachelor’s in my late 40s). Damn things were like a buck each. Probably applied the textbook profit margins.

wtf I would have rioted over having to pay for exam materials

You might be happier if you gave authentic human learning a go.

Eesh hard pass

There is also a generational issue. Many current American college students can't write (or read) cursive, and have less practice than their parents with handwriting of any sort. Pity the graders reading all those blue books.

i mean, there’s no reason to take this argument at face value, it’s clearly a hit job. shameless

Just remove the wireless card from some PCs or disable them temporarily and have the professor or proctor sit in the back of the room so they can see if students cheat. I've seen this done before. It's not even hard.

Idgi how does the blue book give them cramps

My handwriting has always been terrible, esp. when trying to write fast. In law school, exams were blue book but you had the option to type instead. Of course, that was back many years ago when we still had actual typewriters, not word processors, etc. (i.e., no cheating advantage).

Yes, it’s an obvious and good solution. Sorry to the zoomers who thought that they had permanently killed homework and tests

🎻

Who will have a valuable skill then? The ones who learned how to critically think and to do valuable work, maybe even by hand, that no AI can do. Not just type a string of instructions into ChatGPT.

The value is actually negative if it makes you dumber than when you arrived.

Academic success takes a backseat to academic integrity every. damn. time. And it has to be that way or it’s all a big pile of dookie.

My worst nightmare was filling out that bluebook for a final exam in differential equations while the instructor sat in front of our little classroom closely inspecting a Playboy magazine. About 20 students, all of whom were male, except me. (Yes, I post with a guy's name! It's a family joke.)

None of you guys have heard of “lockdown browser” before I guess

Yes, I went into their comments and noted that this was in no way any college student's "worst nightmare."

I did computer science in college, and we had Blue Book exams. I literally wrote code in C++ and Java with pencil and paper. This happened in the 21st century.

Depending on where you live, they're just what "we"'ve always called 'exams'.

They've gotten used to them in my classes. Really feels like ppl running out of things to write about

I am fine with blue books 🤷‍♀️ I had to take blue book exams in some of my fall 2022 college classes (I graduated spring 2023). Written exams are not inherently torturous.

The problem is that writing implements given to students aren’t very ergonomic, they’re usually taught that only one way of holding their pencil is “correct,” and nobody shows them how to do wrist stretches and exercises for preventing carpal tunnel. Blue books aren’t the problem, & AI won’t fix it.

Oh ffs, hand cramps? I'm from the era of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and still had to fill out blue books for my exams. Have we heard from the people that grew up using slide rules yet. Or those that read their textbooks in candlelight.

Darn right I bristle at this framing. We're not Dolores Umbridging them. I'm finding blue book essays may elicit better thinking than word processed ones--perhaps because students stop and think, or just can think better at the pace of handwriting. (I have students do both.)

On the one hand I agree on the other hand the very specific trade off of “students whose hands cramp easily are having to suffer because of the totally unrelated actions of OpenAI” does kind of suck lol

Yep. I sometimes added an apology note on the last page. Or in person at the end of the semester.

I graded so many Blue Books at Berkeley and … honestly if we could tell you did the reading and understood it well enough to write about it coherently, we could tolerate a lot of problems. They were definitely graded generously!

Same

The students who are cheating with LLM:s now are the same type that were cheating before, and blue books did nothing to stop them.

Agree 100%. I wonder how many people fretting about hand cramps are actually concerned with brain cramps. (From my personal experience, I learned and retained more from classes with blue book exams.)

Strike 1: It's the @wsj.com. Smells like some billionaire AI-pusher got "cramps" because students can't be trapped in their systems. Strike 2: Hyperbole: "Nightmare?" FFS. Strike 3: Students SHOULD be expected to think and write like human beings (with necessary accomodations). You're OUT.

If blue books were your "worst nightmare" then you were not an engineering student.

Sorry. I agree with the quote. I didn’t have AI, but being able to type my law school exams and the bar exam was a life saver.

people will whine when you keep them from cheating.

I hated, hated, HATED blue books when I was in school, but I have no problem at all with bringing them back today. If students complain about hand cramps, that's a reason to teach handwriting again.

Same at my college. And we took it seriously. In graduate business school, there was rampant cheating. And everyone in my program had graduated from fancy liberal arts colleges. I'm still shocked.

Everyone should experience hand cramps trying to write everything down with a #2 pencil and pink eraser stains to decorate the page.

I don't know what these are. But I like them already.

It's certainly a good way to reduce plagiarism.

Get lost, spammer.

We are such a nation of weaklings. And, to be clear, I don’t mean the folks who actually need accommodations.

I thought soft times made soft men

if the handwriting is an issue, why not have typewriters or, probably more feasibly, computers in a room where internet access has been blocked

Actually, my worst nightmare was the teachers who believed that threats and insults make good life lessons. Blue book exams weren't a big deal. Some classes I hated had them. Some classes I liked had them.

Bravo to blue books.

in my last two months of high school, I was sick with mono and didn't care if I graduated or not I'd sit for two hours with an exam, then fall back into bed my English teacher said of my final essay, "this is bullshit—you know it and I know it—but it's such good bullshit, I had to give you a C"

The blue books will continue till you lazy bitches stop slopping.

Received as such… The truth is often told in jest.

My school uses electronic blue book, which locks down your computer to only be able to access the test page. That seems relatively fool proof?

Accomodations, like permitting typing where handwriting is a disability (even if not a formal, "diagnosed" disability), should be required. I had shit handwriting and cramped up even after years of it … And pity my teachers, too: my writing was like ancient Greek: ALLCAPSANDNOSPACES.

Every one of my exams for all four of my undergraduate years was in a blue book. So what? WSJ is torturing readers by publishing utter bullshit written by opinionated wimps.

I'm sure it does make their hands cramp if they're not used to writing by hand! As they get used to writing by hand it won't happen anymore. Like, literally give it a week or two

Blue books are a must. A simple way to prevent AI generated drivel.

I took Blue Book exams in law school. It is just paper with a cover. It worked fine for law school essay exams. I never heard any of my classmates complain about the format.

Blue book exams aren't all that bad in my experience. If a student has an actual issue that makes handwriting uncomfortable for them, secure-browser typing is a good workaround.

And yet, decades later, blue books still trigger anxiety.

Well said. Unless there's a legitimate condition/disability then return to hand written is a step in the right direction.

Heck, we could bring back typewriters if they're a help to anyone.

I did exams on the computer in law school (had accommodations for ADHD but everyone wrote them on the computer) and there’s plenty of exam software now that just locks down your PC. We did open book so ours allowed access to local files but no internet. Forcing just the exam window was also a thing.

Literally that's a word processor. We had those!

Oh come on

I went to law school 06-09 and we had testing software like this. Are the current incarnations that easy to get around or something?

LOL I had one of those back in the day!

Oh, for fuck's sake! I used Blue Books as a student and grad student for 12 years, and so far my hand hasn't fallen off. I used to get a little adrenaline rush when I saw them, and that fueled my test taking...

Literally why cursive writing was invented. Just saying...

How is this evil? This is how I found the value of a two-year-old Hyundai Accent

AMEN!

It's ridiculous to complain about hand-writing an exam. I did it many times even though I typed all my home assignments. Maybe what they're really complaining about is linear thinking. With a word processor you can add things all over the place. On paper, you have to organize your thoughts first.

and yet somehow I lived.

No, but I sometimes handwrite an outline and I'm handwriting the first draft of my next book. In my view, the context matters. The purpose of an exam is to assess a student's knowledge. Blue books are an imperfect tool to assess what the student has learned/internalized that's not the output of AI

My professor believes in the classic

Right, at least when I was in school it was actually a little hard to get accomodations. Your need for it has to be documented and the accommodation approved.

Sounds boutique in our ROI-driven political economy. The captains of finance & governance would see mass "learning synthesis" pluri-learning campuses as chaos. They discipline mass institutions to sort (the elite ones are free to accommodate as requested). Hey, all we have to lose are our chains!

Oh, fuck this framing.

Hard to believe any of us survived college back in the day!

Wtf were we doing in those dog eat dog days of barbarism and despair—you know, the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s? Hell, everything in college testing pre-chatbot and text spinner! SATs, GREs, LSATs, and MCATS and the FARs or REGs of CPA exams? Sure as heck ain’t take home, honor system “plz don’t cheat!”

At my school, the demand for blue books was so great this year - and supply so low - I created a template to make my own. I can make 1000 of them for less than $200, and thank goodness for that.

If I were a professor, I’d tell students they can use whatever tools they want to learn the material, but exams would be oral.

man, are they going to love oral exams.

Front and back of each page! It built character, you bunch of modern wimps.

At one point, in an Egyptology class, we had a blue book exam. It was returned with the notation "Sanskrit is easier to read!" But I got an A, and learned to write slower and more carefully.

Anybody got a gift link? Will exchange for a gift link to any WaPo article you might be wanting

Kinda nice how blue books are a shared college experience for everyone regardless of their major or location. The permanent dent in my middle finger from anxiety/driven essay writing feels a little less lonely today.