That’s right folks, it time for finals here in college . . . I know the subject isn’t the most insightful one, but I’m so sick of intelligent insight right now I could scream. And it’s only Monday! I have a whole week left of this crap! Anyone out there share my pain? Anyone good for a few laughs? I need diversion, PLEASE!
This should make you feel better I finished with that stuff 10 years ago.
::ducking and running:::
Finals make some of us just feel more confident, no offence.
Finals?
You think finals suck?
Try writing an NIH grant application on human laboratory studies investigating the mechanisms that underlie gender differences in smoking cessation (yes women, it IS more difficult for you). Imagine 25 single-spaced pages of detailed scientific analysis. Imagine a group of expert reviewers who have a critical eye and (an appropriately) tight fist with NIH dollars. Imagine your career and paycheck are related to your overall grant-writing success. Imagine it is due June 1.
I feel for you on the finals thing, I hate exams.
Yeah, I share your pain. I just finished taking a final. A lot was riding on it. I did poorly.
Don’t you love that sinking feeling you get when you realize that the test is a lot harder than you had expected? Or even worse, when you realize that you studied all the wrong things? I wish one test couldn’t make such a big difference in a person’s grade — especially when the test only has five frigging questions. It sucks. Especially when you’re busting ass to keep a certain GPA so you can keep your scholarship.
I’m still awake from the all-nighter I just pulled. I’m going to bed now.
-JB
I’m taking finals right now, and I don’t like them.
But then I think about people who are dying from leukemia or AIDS. Or people who don’t even have food or potable water. Or people who are living through ethnic “cleansing.” Or people who have perfect mental capacities but no motor control and are thus damned to waste away in a useless shell.
I’m glad to be taking finals.
Glad to be taking finals, eh? Want to take some of mine?
I just finished a Physio final which was all right, but there is a huge Physics final looming on the horizon that I’m just dreading. How do they expect us to remember a whole semester’s worth of material? AAAAHHHHHHH!!!
I love finals! If it wasn’t for the 40% of my grade riding on my finals I would have been screwed for not having turned in half the coding projects. Instead, I got all A’s and B’s!
Heh. And my finals ended last week April…
I’m not accusing anyone else of not studying, but finals became a lot easier for me once I began to study and not just rely on intelligence and BSing ability to fake my way through. How do they expect you to rememeber a semester’s worth of info? Maybe because most people have to remember far more info than that in their given fields or simply to write a cogent sentence.
Finals suck a lot less if the preparation is taken from Day 1 of the semester.
That said, I barely give them in my classes (I don’t find them relevent to my classes), and can advise a few coping methods:
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SLEEP! If it’s an essay test especially, a good night’s sleep will help you to fake it better than barely remembered cramming.
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Avoid study groups–those who need them usually hope that everybody else will “teach” them the material. They can’t help you. (Exceptions exist, but they are rare.)
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Sleep some more and take your vitamins. Bring extra Mountain Dew (etc.) to the test so that the caffeine/sugar buzz doesn’t wear off part-way through.
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Use thesis statements and transitions in essays–you at least look competent.
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Memorize facts while walking around and put them to music. This more than doulbes the chances of memorizing them.
Bucky
Yes, I realize this, but when you’re a pre-med, you don’t really give a rat’s ass about electricity and magnetism in physics. I study my ass off, but this is still a royal pain in the ass.
Tell me about it. I have 3 coming up that is all that is standing between me and a diploma. Two of 'em aren’t so bad, but one is a killer American Goverment final where the professor expects us to write 2 long essays and 3 short essays in 3 hours! And I’m an engineer! Freaking sadist.
Make sure you have a good meal the night before the test.
Oh please. The old college days were a fucking walk in the park compared to business life. Relax and enjoy yourselves; you won’t get this much extended recreational time again until you retire.
I took today off to work on the two case studies that were due today. I finished ONE of them at 4:00 today. At this point, I don’t care about the other one. I might work on it tonight, finish it at work tomorrow, and throw it in the professor’s mailbox tomorrow night. I don’t even care if I pass the class anymore.
I can’t freakin’ believe class participation counts for nothing in this class. It’s a PSYCH class. The only way to know that people understand the material is discussions, not freakin’ short answer exams. ARGGGGG!!!
Hey SwimmingRiddles your post count is 1234. I think mine is 250. Got an A in my Psych class last semester.
**UncleBeer wrote:
Just out of curiosity, what business are you in? I’ve been in half a dozen jobs since college, and none of them has been even close to as stressful as a term paper or a final exam. So either you and I had completely different college experiences (not unlikely), or you’re an emergency room surgeon for the United Nations elite Nuclear War Prevention Laboratory in Manhattan.
Seriously though, I have vastly more recreational time now, in my 8 to 5 job, than I ever did during college. Especially if you don’t count running between administration buildings like a chicken with its head cut off as recreational time (it’s no fun, but it’s not really learning, either).
Boris: Well, I am a university professor and addiction researcher and I completely agree with UncleBeer on this point. College was, for me, long periods of fun interrupted by short moments of work. To give some context to that comment, I attended one of the top 10 liberal arts colleges in the US, and was a double major. Of course, I should also note that it didn’t seem so relaxing at the time – it is in retrospect that I realize all the time that I had.
Swimming: A few questions and a statement about participation follow. I am curious about a few things that you bring up, particularly with regards to assessing participation in Pysch classes.
The quesitons:
- When were your case studies assigned?
- How would you suggest that your psych professor assess class participation fairly?
- Why should participation count in Psych more than other fields?
The statement: As a psychologist, I am sorry to inform you that, for me, participation doensn’t count at work. What counts is Research (publications and grants), Teaching (quality, as determined by student evaluations), and Service (demonstrated commitment to the University’s by working on committees etc.). In none of these three areas am I given credit for participation, only for quality of output.
Bucky: I agree completely with your recipe for academic success. One thing that I would add that worked for me in graduate school and still works well now is this: Students can greatly improve their understanding of complex material by explaing that material to someone who is not in the class and then have that person describe their understanding. What they don’t understand, the student doesn’t understand.
I ask my wife to read my drafts of publications and grants – I work the hardest to revise the areas where she doesn’t understand my points.
Eissclam.
Boris, I’m an engineer. I’m currently working for a consulting firm (of which I own a very small piece) designing outdoor plant for the telecom/catv suppliers. We provide a total turnkey solution for our clients. They tell us where to build, and we tell them when it’s complete and ready to be turned on. Just yesterday I wrote a purchase order for 350,000 feet of 60 strand fiber optic cable. As of this morning, Lucent Technology orders have a 7 month lead time on fiber. Grand total for this order is nearly $250,000. When you spend this kind of your client’s money, you better be damn sure you get it right the first time. Additionaly, I manage the CAD department here which entails keeping 4 CAD guys billable for a total of 160 hours per week while meeting budgets and schedules.
Before I worked here, I was a lead mechanical engineer for a sub-contractor manufacturing and packaging custom AC plasma displays for military applications. Contracts at this compnay typically ran into the ten of millions of dollars. And DOD oversight is no treat either.
Now, I keep hearing college students complain about the utility of their cirriculum. Does the phrase “I’ll never use this in the real world,” ring a bell? So, if you believe you’ll never use what you are being taught, why should it cause you any stress?
Exactly - I **WISH[/b) I had as much free time and as few responsibilities as I did in college.
And UncleBeer’s last post rocks - again.
Hey Silo: I work 40 hours a week, and have an additional part time job on top of volunteering. Bite me.