Method for exam studies
13 November 2007, 10:25 pm. 18 Comments. Filed under School.
Ten days since I finished my exams this year and I'm still not quite in holiday mode. Actually, I'm reminiscing that whole exam period because I'm being a freak right now. Every time I face exams I wonder how I got myself through the terrible period in all the previous exams. So here's recording how I motivated myself to get through it this time:
- Short-term rewards: finish one topic and face a short break. As I got myself into an obsession with reading online love novels during exams, I rewarded myself by reading one chapter after every topic studied.
- Pause the music: only play music during the short break, even if it means pausing right in the middle of a favourite track.
- Practice papers in exam conditions: quiet space, limited time, full solitude and whatnot. When I couldn't be bothered to write practice essays or long answers, I did a plan with bulleted points.
- Gathering
arroganceconfidence: bloat the small head with as much up-myself-ness as possible. Recite good course grades over and over again: Statistics 95.25% A+, Mathematics 97.9% A+, Economics 90.2% A+, Accounting 83.25% A-. Oh I'm so sure I can ace the exams. (Remembering to throw the darned Law 68% B- out the window because there's no need to clutter up the mind with junk like that before exams. I can do so much better. Yeah, right.) - Get fat: eat lots and lots of junk food and chocolate. That way, it's harder to get off the study chair to go out and mess around. This exam period was the time I spent the most on junk food. (But I also exercised because I didn't actually want to get as fat as not being able to lift my pen to write during exams.)
- Shut MSN: but I can't resist that hottie on my contact list! Well um, I'm sure, my disappearance for a couple of days will just make him admit to himself that he totally can't live without me.
So that's how I got through my doom this October/November. For the whole 12 weeks of the semester I kept telling myself I will read through my notes so I don't need to study so much by exam time. Unfortunately, I still ended up cramming everything by writing summary exam notes during that very last week.
With the tips above though, I finished six weeks of Economics notes in two days, six weeks of accounting notes in one day, and the rest I didn't need notes for. 
But I assure you, Economics was crazy load.
I have nothing to prove my final exam performance with yet; still waiting for exam results. How do you motivate yourself for work you really don't want to do?
A break or something
13 October 2007, 1:47 pm. 43 Comments. Filed under School.
First-year uni ends in a week. It's been such a boring, stressful year, what with constant pressure from parents and all. No driving until I get into law, no going out with friends until I get into law, no boyfriend until I get into law, no perming, no movies, no freedom until I get into *singing* law, law, law. Stuff it. I could perform better if they give me a break or something. I haven't been out with my friends since the mid-year holidays in July, and they think all the males are out there to kill me. I will officially dub my present life Gee Eich Eee Wai. And if I don't actually get into second-year law next year, well then, I think the rest of my life would be dubbed "GHEY".
So how ironic. I'm going to take a "break", but in actual fact it means hard work. And when hard work is over, this break will end. It's me trotting sluggishly along with the exams-therefore-blog-hiatus crowd. That's joining Xuan, Autumn and Chien Yee's gang. My attempt to work like a nerd.
I know it won't actually work. I'm still going to hangout daily on MSN, blogs and forums. But it should give a slight psychological effect: quit blogging will do better; and it might actually make me do five marks better in total. Hell ends at 12.30pm on 3 November. Hopefully, life will be better.
Hard test and crazy students
13 September 2007, 11:44 pm. 13 Comments. Filed under School.
I finished my mid-semester LAW 131 Legal Method test at 8.10 pm tonight and came back home sulking. It was really hard. My parents were scolding me because they always think I'm the only one who ever finds the tests hard. Wrong!
We had to analyse and apply a case so there wasn't a lot of content to study for beforehand and I did various past tests for practice as well. Unfortunately, it really was crazy hard and I had five minutes left in the end to write an essay. In those five minutes I wrote a brief introduction and two screwed paragraphs of five lines each—I'm expecting a 5/25 there.
Some crazy students from the row sitting behind me walked out of the test room saying how it was actually not too bad and pretty easy. "Yeah I think I probably got a B." That originally made me scared but my law tutor said they must've screwed it somewhere. Even a lecturer in another room announced that it was a very hard test too.
So it wasn't just me, really. My tutor supervised another room and told me about this crazy student. She handed her test in after the first 30 minutes, saying it was too hard and she wanted to take the last train home. That brought out a "LOL" from me. Too cute. He now refers to her as train girl.
I don't get the point of setting crazy hard tests and also marking crazy strictly where everyone generally performs horribly bad and you're having to scale it up more than ten marks in the end. My final law exam from last semester was scaled up 12 marks. I shouldn't complain about it because there's nothing bad about jumping two grades but honestly, it's pointless.
Rest tonight, study for next week's two tests tomorrow and the weekend. My near-future looks so daunting. But on the other hand, if we skip two months, I have a four-month summer holiday between November and March. It's great how they just take out a third of a whole year like that.
