William Shakespeare

Test?

To test or not to test, that is the profound question Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous examinations, Or to take arms against a sea of syllabus, And by opposing, earn a degree? To test: to fail; No more; and by a fail, to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That students are heir to? 'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To test, to fail; To fail, perchance to learn. Ay, there's the rub, For in that learning what knowledge may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal classroom, Must give us pause. There's the respect That makes calamity of so long a semester. For who would bear the whips and scorns of teachers, The professor's wrong, the proud student's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When they themselves might their quietus make With a bare pencil? Who would exams bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary desk, But that the dread of something after school, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. Soft you now! The fair Ophelia. Nymph, in thy orisons, Be all my schoolwork remembered.