Today marks the beginning of miserable mid-term exams. If past semesters are indicators, I'll spend the next week glimpsing through some notes, feeling confident I've paid enough attention in class. The next morning, I'll stare at my blank blue book realizing I haven't learned anything substantial or even opened my textbook all semester.

That's OK, I have a secret weapon for such emergencies — the shotgun method. Putting my creative mind to work, I simply wring from my brain any information that could possibly be relevant to the question and attempt to draw semi-logical connections. It is guaranteed to produce at least three blue book pages of absolute bull and has never resulted in anything less than a BC for me.

It's advice I may give to the people at my service learning site who are studying for their citizenship tests. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services at the beginning of the month switched to a new concept-based test from a fact-based version.

Before, test-takers answered questions like, "How many stars are there on our flag?" or, "Name the three branches of the federal government." Now, possible questions include, "What does the Constitution do?" and, "Name one problem that led to the Civil War."

I'm glad the test focuses on more relevant information (although some of the old questions were retained in the 100-question pool) and also that it requires a conceptual understanding of American principles. It's not as simple as memorizing some factoids and American trivia.

"The basic problem with the test as it originally existed is that it only required people to memorize various facts," said Edward Fallone, associate professor at Marquette Law School. The problem now is evaluation can be very subjective. As Fallone tells his 11-year-old son, teachers don't want creative and original answers, they want you to regurgitate information.

The USCIS said the goal of the redesign is to provide meaningful understanding, greater uniformity and consistency.

Back up. Consistency? I think any student would agree open-ended questions lead to very original answers — though not necessarily correct answers — and can be subjective to the best of teachers. Toss in how exciting the subject material is and the scales tip in your favor. In pilot runs, 92 percent of citizenship applicants passed on their first try, whereas 84 percent passed the original test on the first attempt.

Still, some oppose the change.

"The test is harder than the one before," said Luz Hernandez, who teaches citizenship classes at Voces de la Frontera on Milwaukee's south side. It presents difficulties for English learners because it asks test-takers to form well-structured sentences about abstract concepts while they are nervous, she said.

I can attest to that. I still bumble like an idiot when I do interviews in Spanish, and I'm in my seventh year of advanced Spanish classes. Immigrants need to live in the United States only five years before they can apply for naturalization.

Sarah Blackwell, an attorney with Blackwell Law Group in Milwaukee who specializes in immigration, said she's seen immigration officials go easy on English literacy components of the test, asking easier questions of those with less fluency.

So does the test better prepare people to be citizens? Blackwell approved, but Fallone said no, the test is mostly a ceremonial process — meaningful but not really useful.

My grandparents emigrated from Ireland and became U.S. citizens. They were poor, missed their families and spoke with Irish brogues until the day they died. But they were proud to be citizens. Perhaps it's only a ceremony, but I think the test is an important one in educating applicants on the history, rights and responsibilities of citizenship. I favor the new test, but I hope it's used to teach what a powerful and worthwhile thing American citizenship is, rather than to weed out those with imperfect language skills.

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