Midterm survival guide 2.0

Listen here, freshies. Midterms are five school days away.  So, if your teachers are beginning to crack down on classwork and homework, don’t be surprised.

Midterm exams count for ten percent of your final grade along with an additional ten percent from final exams. For a semester-long course, the “midterm” is considered a “final” for the course and accounts for ten percent.

Here are the stages of getting prepared for midterms:

Stage One (immediately after break):

The doom sets in. Reports of sweaty palms and pounding headaches surface. The workload begins to increase steadily, coinciding with the varying degrees of procrastination.

Stage Two (two weeks before exams):

Some students begin to commence work, while the majority of the student population participate in a trial of elongated procrastination. Teachers begin to demonstrates signs of mental discontent.

Stage Three (one and a half weeks before exams):

High levels of stress begin, along with a communal feeling of panic. Personal hygiene is collectively disregarded, as well as sleep.

Stage Four (week of exams):

An eerie calmness sets over the school. Never before has there been such a feeling of “We are all in this together”, as students unanimously give up studying and proceed to accept their fate.

If you are one of the few cherubs anxious to succeed, there is only so much you can do at this point.  Here are some tips to get you through.

• It has been proven that sniffing a particular scent, such as lavender, while studying and then sniffing the particular scent again before taking a test, can jog one’s memory and improve test scores.
• Similarly, chewing gum while studying, then chewing the same flavor of gum when testing, may boost your scores.
• Another trick includes writing down all the relevant information you can think of pertaining to the subject you are testing on ahead of the exam, as if you could take it with you. Writing vital information can be linked to an improvement in memory.
• Try to avoid cramming the night before, as this method leaves you exhausted on test day, resulting in poorer test grades.

The midterm schedule to date goes as follows:

Wednesday, 1/20
G- 8-9:30
F- 10-11:30
Lunch- All
E- 12:30-2:00

Thursday, 1/21
C- 8-9:30
D-10-11:30
Lunch- All
make-up – 12:30-2:00

Friday, 1/22
B- 8-9:30
A- 10-11:30
Lunch- All
make-ups – 12:30-2:00

A few more notes

Be on time! Students will not be admitted late to an exam.

On Wednesday 1/20 only, students will be allowed to leave campus for lunch.  However, they will not be admitted late for E-block exam.