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0 Final Exams
Written by Alejandro Neufeld
The spring semester is barreling towards its inevitable conclusion. With that comes the dreaded final projects and exams that seem to sneak up on us even though profs constantly remind us about them. I may be alone in this sentiment, but at around the halfway point of March, I begin to yearn for summer, and the classroom begins to feel claustrophobic and stuffy. Especially after midterms, I can gradually feel my motivation for school to dissipate in anticipation for the 5 month period where all I can focus on is work, vacation, and weather that makes any day spent indoors feel like a waste.
But before we can hit the lake or take that summer vacation, we must undergo the final exam ritual to prove that we retained enough information from lectures to warrant a passing mark. For students who have undergone this ritual since elementary and middle school, it tends to become a monotonous task that has no real meaning other than the mark they receive.
But why are exams like this? Why are they always scheduled during periods of chaos? Why do students like myself always end up feeling less prepared for finals than we should be? Is it fair that finals are weighted so heavily when anyone can get lucky (or unlucky) while writing them?
These are some questions that have been banging around in my head in the last few weeks. Rather than writing a snooty research article about that one magic method to ace your exams, I instead want to share some of my observations about the final exam period. These are based purely on my own experience, and if you think I am blowing smoke out of my rear end, you are probably not alone.
The one thing I am extremely confident in is the idea that stressing out excessively about an exam does not lead to better performance on that exam. In fact, I usually end up underperforming on an exam that I have been worried about for weeks leading up to the date of the exam.
But that does not mean that ignoring an impending exam and not doing any studying at all is a viable way to succeed either. Sure, your stress levels will be almost non-existent, but during the 3-hour exam slot, you will be hit with a wave of panic when none of the questions cue any memories of concepts discussed in lectures.
Instead, I have found that a moderate amount of worrying about exams is what usually leads to favourable marks. This is because a mild amount of stress is actually helpful to you. Moderate stress regarding an exam will often lead you to be easily motivated to study for that exam. Stress is often used in a negative context, but when you weaponize it, it is one of the most powerful motivators out there.
Studying for exams is its own weird soul-draining ritual that sometimes only reminds me of all the material I still need to go over to succeed on an exam. Especially now that the weather seems to be warming up, sitting in a cramped room surrounded by textbooks and a laptop is the last thing that I want to do. Sometimes, when you can hear birds chirping and feel the warmth of the Sun as it shines through your window while smelling the fresh Earth after a Spring shower, exams are the last thing on your mind.
To combat this, I try to do distributed studying. All this entails is spacing out your study sessions into intervals instead of cramming the night before an exam. It has been proven to work, and some of the earliest experiments in psychology were geared toward investigating how we store and use information.
A final but important aspect of the final exam season is positive thinking. I have the problem of always looking for the negative side of things, but this is not a good strategy for final exams. Instead of complaining about them and ruminating on whether or not you will pass, have confidence and think of the satisfaction of proving your knowledge and understanding about a topic. University sometimes can leave students feeling cynical and pessimistic about life, especially in classes where we are forced to unpack serious issues that have plagued humanity.
Lastly, know that you will not perform as well as you want on every exam you take. But that is ok! We learn a lot from our mistakes, and the greatest thing about humans is our ability to overcome adversity and make the best out of bad situations. While exams are a fact of life on campus, they are not dictating what kind of person you are or taking away any of your worth.
I wish all students on campus a happy, healthy, and successful final exam season and a rewarding summer break as well!
