Exam Diary: The Ups and Downs of Sitting Four Exams

It has been an absolutely fabulous exam year. Sitting exams for four courses is challenging, but the changes to my study procedures over the year, my revising plan and the reality of multiple exams really helped me improve study outcomes and, hopefully, exam results.  What I noticed about my exam experience this year, despite doubling my course load, is a much more focused process with better results, at least from my process point of view.  This week I thought it might be helpful to others considering enrolling, or wondering what managing four courses is like, to see my Exam Diary.  The schedule for my (BA English) papers started with one exam on 9 May and then three consecutive days, 14, 15 and 16 May. That’s eight interesting days, and a sixteen day revising process. Here’s what it was like:

1 May: My meta-exam revising strategy begins! At first I thought two days for each course would work but immediately realized that engaging with each course every day is more productive.  The schedule that worked best for me was four sessions, one for each course, ideally of two to four hours each spaced throughout the day.  This helped me maintain engagement with all the material I had to revise in an incremental process.

Economic Comic Relief

Amid a crisis triple threat in the US, and cramming for exams as students, there comes a bit of amusing news from Venezuela. It seems the country is on its last roll of toilet paper (toilet tissue).  It appears the government, in an attempt to ensure the availability of several staples, set prices for those items. One wonders if the pols there were awake for Economics 101. Perhaps pols all own bidets.

At any rate, for those who may not be familiar with Economics: The laws of supply and demand suggest that there is a market price for toilet paper. At this price producers are happy to exchange their wares with consumers who are all too happy to purchase the product. When the government sets a price below the market, producers become unwilling to produce their product. Somewhat counter-intuitively this is called a price ceiling, because the government has dictated the highest legal price.

The government has promised to rectify the problem, but Venezuelans seem to think their government is full of it. Hopefully this is a brief respite from the stress of exams, unless you happen to live in Venezuela.

Jay is studying the Diploma for Graduates in Economics by distance learning with the University of London International Programmes. He lives in Florida, USA.

Epidemiology at 48: My top 10 exam tips

So the topic of this month’s blog post must obviously be the exams. Is there anything else?

Actually, there is. My eldest son took his younger brothers to town on their bikes for the first time ever, just the three of them. My middle son started learning to barrel race (yes, there are cowboys in New Jersey!). My youngest son is simultaneously learning some new soccer moves and putting the finishing touches on Mozart’s “Turkish March.”

But still—let’s face it. EXAMS. June 3, June 5 and June 7, conveniently scheduled the same week as my 49th birthday and my 15th wedding anniversary.

Here are my top 10 tips for prepping:

1. Still finishing the courses themselves? Your synapses are frayed. So outsource your brain: Take. Good. Notes.

2. Get enough sleep. Don’t even bother cracking the books if you can’t get at least 7 hours.

Managing Exam ‘Time’

Exams are usually memorable experiences for me. They are sometimes terrifying and unfamiliar, like my first year, and sometimes a bit funny, familiar and tinged with chagrin, like this year.   All of the experiences seem to center around time.  In my first exam year, time to study, time to revise, and time in the exam room was frightening to contemplate.  The material, process, and experience were all unfamiliar. Somehow in the first year I managed the time constraints surrounding all three challenges while reading Renaissance Comedy.  This year, once again, the controlling theme is time.  Yesterday, exam day, it felt like a fairly humorous conspiracy was all centered on time. With four courses, and three exams next week, there really is no wiggle room with respect to time.

Exam Method and Madness

So I made it through what I call ‘Assignment Month’..phew! By the end there I was just going on autopilot, and not necessarily giving my best work, but hey, que sera sera…

After that I took a little break to travel for a few days and catch the inimitable singer/songwriter Mika on two stops of his North American tour. I was cognizant that exams are peering at me around the corner so I carried my text book, fully prepared to do some studying in any spare moments. The plane ride passed with no studying. That was OK. The next day was brilliant weather-wise in New York City and as I went to queue for the concert quite early, I felt sure I’d get some studying done. Twelve hours later and the only time I touched the book was when I considered having Mika sign it for me as I met him backstage. I guess what I’m saying is that studying on a vacation is hard :)

Vatican’s astronomer on astronomy and religious belief

Relationship of science and religion is one of my interests and I think it is a very promising area of study and research. This blog post by Dr Guy Consolmagno SJ, Vatican’s Astronomer, is an interesting meditation not only on this relationship but also on a lot more, including how an MIT graduate in astronomy who worked for Peace Corps ended up becoming a Jesuit and Vatican’s astronomer. One of the interesting questions he asks is:

Science is not a big book of facts. Science is not about ‘proving’ anything. Science describes, but the descriptions are incomplete; we keep hoping that they get better. For that very reason you cannot use science to prove the existence of God (or no-God). But can science encourage us in our belief?

Read the post to find out!

Edgar is studying for a Bachelor of Divinity with the University of London International Programmes, with academic direction from Heythrop College.

Getting Through Exam Week

The dance of exams…

It’s time to dance as they say in America. I like that expression because it’s such an uplifting metaphor even though it means that, ready or not, we have reached the time for action.  For me, there are always the inevitable situations that seem to cluster around exam week. It has entered the realm of the comic after several consecutive years. Since stress works for me this year I decided to embrace it. For example, in the most endearing way, the CEO of the organization I work for wondered out loud if I can research and write our annual report before my exams begin on 8 May, and if I will be able to work on exams days.  The answers are it cannot, and no.  But, it does continue the dance metaphor, one colleague shared the highly descriptive phrase ‘Andaba del Tingo al Tango,’ or in other words, one can go a little crazy with plenty to do and a lot of places to be.

Plan B

One lesson I learnt from the last academic year is to plan better. I had this fool proof study schedule for this time; at least I thought I did. It had the number of hours, the areas to be covered and exactly what I hoped to achieve each day. I had planned the specific chapters from study guides to revise, pages I’d read from text books, cases I needed to find and read online and past paper questions I would attempt.

I had considered that I take longer to read Trust Law material than Tort Law, when allocating time for the subjects. I had tried to be as specific and practical as possible. I had considered all my personal and professional commitments. I was all set for the exams. Except there was one thing I had forgotten to consider in my schedule; Life. I had not realized that sometimes when we have a plan for life, life can have a different one for us.

The Rhetoric of Exams

My favorite rhetorician: Marcus Tullius Cicero. This year in my courses I am studying the use of classic themes in English literature, and the importance of classical theories of rhetoric in the education of Early Modern, Restoration, Augustan, and Romantic writers.

The ‘Rhetoric of Exams’ might sound odd to you, but I think there is a definite discourse of exams that merits some investigation, analysis and understanding. This year my goal is to embrace it. During my BA English study I have worked with tutors and coaches in a variety of ways that have all proved to be very useful and productive. This year I have a rhetoric coach. Considering exams and my participation in them from this point of view is very enlightening.

My current interest in rhetoric all started in both predictable and serendipitous ways. Predictable because, like my colleagues, I am preoccupied with getting the most productive results from available study time, really learning and applying knowledge, and getting good marks in exams.  There is a real relationship between those three points which should be articulated in order to achieve those goals, and which brings me to the very fortunate serendipity which occasioned my meeting and beginning to work with a rhetoric coach.

What Terrorists Want

Like most people, I was shocked at the bombing during the Boston Marathon. Television footage showed the devastating injuries caused when a bomb explodes, however primitive or home-made. I vividly remember as a young child overhearing my parents talk about the dismembered bodies on the streets of my home city, Dublin, after a bombing in 1974 (that killed 26 people and an unborn child). But for most of my life, almost all terrorist activity took place within the border of Northern Ireland about 70 miles away, far enough away for me to be immune to daily realities, but near enough to be part of my consciousness.

Although Boston grabbed the headlines, terrorist acts are perpetrated regularly. On the day of the Boston attack 75 people were killed in Iraq, the day before 35 were killed in Somalia, and the day after 22 were killed in Pakistan and 16 injured in Bangalore, India.

My main reason for studying Politics and International Relations is to help me understand the world around me. For some, understanding terrorism is impossible. How can you understand a suicide bomber who is prepared to blow themselves up for a cause? Or someone who would kill innocent people indiscriminately?