exams over papers?

At the end of the semester I'm noticing something... I don't have one final exam but final papers in every class. As my friends from other colleges started coming into their week of finals they are saying the same thing, all papers! I'm wondering, do teachers know something that we don't? Personally, test are easier than papers mostly because the abundance of multiple choice and fill in the blanks. Then Ted said that we didn't want an exam instead of our final paper because it would be 100 questions like our quizzes, take home. Well, that still sounds easier to me! : ) Only because you're guaranteed to get correct answers and have the time to look them up. I started to think well our papers are like looking something up also so why am I feeling like papers are so much more work, not to mention they definitely are way more work for the teachers to grade? Then I realized our papers are making us become confident in ourselves as students. To look up the answer for a test out of a book or from your notes, you know you're correct because it's what the teacher said or what that really important guy from your book said. In our papers we can only use that kind of knowledge to back up our own. What we have to say is the focus and the pressure is on us. Hopefully we benefit from all this paper writing, I'm sure we will