Appassionato

End of 2007 for university

Categorised as School & tagged with tests, uni.

After more than three weeks of mental torture since the exams finished, my long-waited complete set of exam results for this semester finally came through yesterday.

• Account­ing: A+
• Economics: A+
• Law: B+
• Math­em­at­ics: A+
• Stat­ist­ics: A+

As expected, the lowest mark had to be for Law. *sulks* But my overall year GPA is reas­on­ably high – high enough for entry into second-year Law if there are no surprises. So I’m satisfied.

On the downside, my next year’s timetable is quite bad. That is, classes until 5 pm on three days per week. I’m not looking forward to the papers much either.

• LAW 201 Criminal Law
• LAW 211 Public Law
• LAW 299 Legal Research
• ECON 201 Microeconomics
• ECON 211 Macroeconomics
• ECON 241 Inter­na­tional Economics
• INTBUS 210 Inter­na­tional Business Requirement
• MATHS 208 Data Analysis for Commerce
• Can’t decide between Japanese, Psy­cho­logy or Philo­sophy for my last paper

Boring classes. Probably a boring post for those who don’t care. But I know I always like knowing what papers other students are taking because I’m nosy that way.

What to do in a real exam

Categorised as School & tagged with tests, tips.

Following on from my method for exam studies, I should be reas­on­ably well-prepared for exams. Unfor­tu­nately, having A+ answers in the head won’t always guarantee an A+ answer script. As requested by Alex, here are the good things I do during a real exam:

1. Time man­age­ment: weigh the time against maximum marks allocated. A two-hour test (120 minutes) for three essays means maximum 40 minutes on each essay. Key is to finish the paper overall. If time’s up for one question and it’s incom­plete, skip and go to the next because there is “dimin­ish­ing marginal con­tri­bu­tion” for each word written. Two excellent answers doesn’t beat three above-average. Go back and add extra blabbing if there’s leftover time in the end.

   3 x 80% > 2 x 90% + 1 x 50%

2. Plan, plan, plan: before writing an essay or long answer, do a plan. I scribble bulleted main points to provide a basic structure and direction so I know where I’m going. If I don’t have enough time to finish my answer, the examiner would refer to the plan and see where I intended to go. There’s usually marks awarded for the main points in plans if the actual answer is unfinished.
3. Easy first: this comes down to personal pref­er­ence, but I like getting easy questions out of the way first. It tends to build up con­fid­ence during exams and the easy could be finished quickly to save extra time for the hard. If I’m writing a hard question first, the nightmare of even more questions to do after­wards haunts me while I’m writing. Scan through all the questions of the paper before writing and attack the little weaklings before the big-heads. Most of the time, answers don’t have to be written in the order of questions given.
4. Write legibly: neat hand­writ­ing is not a priority during exams, but pleasing the marker could only be a good thing. If a marker is wavering between giving a four or a five, the one key determ­in­ant could be down to legib­il­ity. Of course, speed writing is worth more than neat, so speed and “com­fort­ably legible” is the way to go. (Because “barely legible” is still a synonym for bad.)
5. Check answers: finishing an exam early doesn’t mean “Yeah baby I’m outta here!” But rather, going back and redo the entire test paper or just recheck­ing the answers. I have this habit of not leaving exams early. I had 1.5 hours left after I finished my last Stat­ist­ics exam. So I sat there doodling this current site design (Version 19). While doodling, a thought struck me and I knew I got one answer wrong. If I had left early, I would never have been able to correct it.

(In the end however, I did leave my Stat­ist­ics exam 30 minutes early and retreat to MSN on school computers. Don’t copy.)

During an exam, much of it comes down to the study before­hand, con­fid­ence and time. I tend to know my stuff, but I also tend to lose con­fid­ence just before entering the exam room and spend too much time per­fect­ing answers. I get my con­fid­ence back by answering easy questions first, and time is a bigger problem. I’m a fast writer (I write short and concisely, arguably good or bad), but most of my time go into deciding what and how to write. So #1 and #2 are my “big things”.

Some people are good at studying, some people are good at writing exams, I’m probably good at neither. I just know how to cram and I stick to the above tips. A lot of study and exam tech­niques depend on indi­vidual habits, but I hope these may help nevertheless.

Method for exam studies

Categorised as School & tagged with geek, tests, tips, uni.

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:

1. 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.
2. Pause the music: only play music during the short break, even if it means pausing right in the middle of a favourite track.
3. 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.
4. Gathering arrogance con­fid­ence: 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.)
5. 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.)
6. 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?