Exams

Is there really any point to them? I mean, seriously, do most of us really understand what is being tought or are you mearly teaching yourself (a.k.a. mugging/cramming) for exams? Personally, if I liked the subject, I would actually retain the information, but most of the time the cycle would just be to solve a lot of problems (for more hard science courses), solve the somewhat similiar ones on the test, and then forget, or memorize (for more soft courses), spit out and forget. Do we really remember what was taught in biology I or something? Most probably not. A friend of mine says "Exams are another way of saying 'How much do you remember from this weeks review?'" and he's right, because usually the weeks before the exam I don't have a clear concept of what is going on until just a few days before it. Because of my feeling on this, I made a committement a while ago that if I were ever a professor, I would never give a test unless it was a large class and then I was forced to, but rather I'd grade based on projects, homework and attendance/participation. Believe it or not, I learned the most from my Japanese linguistic class where it was like that format, and where I had a lot of passion in doing my presentation that I absorbed more information than any test would ever give me.