So I had a History exam today.
One of the questions was an 'interpretation' question. You get given a historian's interpretation on a certain event and you have to analyse it.
The key part is that you have to compare their interpretation with OTHER historians that you've studied. If you don't do that then you're limited to 60% for that question.
So. The interpretation question was not on what I expected. All of the interpretations of the historians I had researched and memorised became invalid.
Drastic action was required.
I used the names of the historians I had studied and the names of their books, and made up what they thought about the issue. Apparently Eric Hobsbawm wrote in Age of Extremes that the Bolsheviks won the Russian Civil War because of the fervour and zeal of their forces, and Harold Shukman wrote in The Russian Revolution that they won because of the geographical distance between the opposition forces.
Basically I just took reasons for Bolshevik success and assigned historians to them.
Now, I'm thinking that unless the examiner has actually read these works, then surely they won't know what the historians actually wrote? Would they give me the benefit of the doubt?
Looking at the markscheme on the specimen paper, they don't actually identify individual historians and what they said; they only indicate the viewpoint that some historians' interpretations might take.
Am I a pro ********ter? What are the chances they'll see through me?