How to do well on a final examination
Saying the word “final” is usually enough to bring a dreadful silence over a classroom. Final examinations can indeed be scary stuff. Studying ahead of time and getting a good night’s sleep before an exam are two good ways to defuse stress and do well. Here are five more suggestions for doing well:
1. Overprepare. That might seem like a poor way to study. But over many years of teaching, I’ve found it to be sound advice. It’s much wiser to take an exam too seriously and find it easier than you expected than to wish–when it’s too late–that you’d studied more. Think of the baseball player who swings two or three bats before stepping up to the plate. His on-deck time is what makes his work with one bat stronger.
Don’t confuse overpreparing with cramming. If you overprepare, do so in advance, so that you can get a good night’s sleep before the exam.
2. Bring several writing instruments. If your one pen or pencil fails and you need to borrow a replacement, you’ll lose time, annoy others, and look silly.
3. Use your time wisely.
Wear a watch so that you can manage time on your own terms. Many professors and proctors will mark the time on the blackboard, but glancing at a watch is better than depending upon the click of the chalk–distracting at best, stressful at worst–that lets you know that another chunk of time has vanished.Map out your work. When your professor talks about the exam, make sure that it’s clear how each part will count toward the whole. If, for instance, you have two hours and an essay that’s worth half the exam, give yourself an hour to plan, write, and review your essay.
It’s not unusual for students in the blur of exam week to lose track of when an exam has started and will end. So map out your work not only in minutes but with starting and ending points. Then you can’t lose track of where you are. For instance,
2:15-3:15: long essay
3:15-3:45: short essay
3:45-4:45: identifies
You can work out these details beforehand and write them discreetly in the corner of an exam booklet when you begin.
Don’t rush. This advice is especially important if your exam falls late in exam week, when many students have already left campus. Just take your time; your vacation will be waiting for you when you’re done.
4. Elaborate. If you have a choice between making a point briefly and elaborating, choose to elaborate. A professor reading a final exam is reading to “get to done”–to assign a grade and move on to the next exam in the stack. So you should show your knowledge and understanding in all appropriate ways. As I tell my students, I like reading an exam that lets me say “Okay, okay, you know the material. Enough!”
This suggestion assumes that whatever you’re elaborating on is relevant to the question at hand. Irrelevancies won’t help your case. Nor will mere bull, which is altogether different from knowledge and understanding.
5. Don’t panic. In the worst-case exam scenario, an exam-taker goes on automatic, misreading questions, skipping key directions (e.g., “Choose only one”), and producing verbal babble as the time zooms by. It’s important to stay calm enough to focus on the work there is to do. You might visualize yourself sitting down, reading the questions, planning your responses, and doing well. Another way to avoid panicking is to remind yourself how much time you really have. A two-hour exam equals four episodes of a situation comedy–a lot of time when you look at it that way.
As this fall semester comes to an end, I’d like to thank Leon for the chance to contribute to lifehack.org. And I’d like to extend best wishes to all readers (students and faculty) contending with final exams.
Michael Leddy teaches college English and has published widely as a poet and critic. He blogs at Orange Crate Art.
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Comments
Michael Leddy says on December 3rd, 2005 at 2:51 am
Oops–that should be 3:45-4:15. I messed up, and I wasn’t even taking a final!
Kyle says on December 3rd, 2005 at 10:16 am
I also find that eating a granola bar or similar about half an hour before the exam helps (along the lines of getting rest, which is also important), and not trying to do a last-minute review while waiting for the exam to begin. Those last-second peeks just jumble up your thought process — if you don’t know it by then, it’s not really going to help, and if you *do* know it, it will only confuse you a little when you start doubting yourself…
Jess says on December 3rd, 2005 at 10:53 pm
I found it to be useful to read through the entire exam before starting and then start with the question that you find to be the easiest to answer. This accomplishes two things: First, once you get into the exam and are working on an answer you calm down and get into a “groove.” Second, this ensure that you do not spend too much time answering the hard questions that you don’t have sufficient time to answer those that are relatively easy.
Bob B says on December 7th, 2005 at 12:42 am
Some may consider “overprepare” to mean “study a lot”. Having studied much about learning and done unofficial experiments with myself and others (e.g. Don’t take my word from fact, but give it a try), studying a lot leads to poorer grades.
Think of your brain like one of those brita filters. You can stuff a lot into the pre-filter part, but it takes some time for the water to filter into the drinkable area. The pre-filter area is your short-term memory. On average, most people can remember between 4 and 7 “chunks” of information. Anything more than that and you forget a chunk. If you want to see for yourself, get some random 10 digit numbers. Try to memorize them digit by digit. Now try to memorize them 2 digits at a time. Which one felt easier? Which one did you have more success with.
The filter in this analogy is recall. Learning isn’t about staring at information, its about clearing your mind of the information and then recalling it at a later point. First start off with small intervals between recalls. Slowly lengthen it until you’re comfortable with your ability to recall it. The nice thing about this strategy is it allows you to interleave studying on different topics. Spend 2 minutes doing memorize/recall loops on 4 - 7 things and then switch to the next 4 - 7 chunks. After 10 minutes, try and recall stuff from the first group. You get the idea.
Environment is also a huge factor in the ability to recall. Our memories are tied to the nature of the environment. The things we remember when its cold out are completely different than when its really hot out. So if you study until you’re tired and then go to the test bright eyed and bushy tailed, you may have done yourself a disservice. Likewise, if you steady completely aware and show up to the test nearly zonked out. This is one of the main reason why diving tests are given underwater. The life or death nature of some of the tests requires a life or death like situation to truly test that you’ll do what’s correct.
bob says on January 23rd, 2006 at 7:36 am
i fucking hate finals!
DMT says on October 12th, 2006 at 2:34 am
i got 4 essays to write nd 6 unfamiliar passages to answer in 3 hrs..
Navreen says on November 14th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Trust me never “cram” because it DOESN’T HELP whatsoever, you confuse yourself even more and you tire yourself out. If you ever want to do well in your exams it’s better to start revising in smaller chunks way before the exam than just cram it all in thinking it will remain fresh in you memory it doesnt help! Once I REVISED FOR AN EXAM 2 weeks before and I felt really ill so I couldnt revise as much as I would have wanted to, and I felt really stupid because I didn’t cover everything and I regret it now!!!!!!! JUST TAKE MY ADVISE!
nigga says on November 26th, 2006 at 5:29 am
nigga stole my bike
mayam says on April 20th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
make notes….get some one to test u…that reallly helps..
Whatup says on May 31st, 2007 at 6:51 am
im about to take finals in high school
Zac says on June 3rd, 2007 at 2:15 pm
I got exam tomorrow. I have to read 180 pages of Microbiology for Multiple choice and Short answer questions. Plus 36 Long questions. Its almost midnight. And I have never studied a thing or attended a lecture. Yet. Im confident that I can do it. And make it thro the exam. All I need to do is study like hell and pull the mother of all allnighters! I hope I dont have a procrastination attack or sleep. @_@
Andre says on June 17th, 2007 at 11:03 am
I really hate when a song comes in your head when your in an exam. Anyone know of any good strategies to rid your brain of that song
Michael Leddy says on December 4th, 2007 at 11:29 am
@Bob B: An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Your Parents Were Right, Scholars Say: More Studying Leads to Better Grades” (9/7/2007) describes a study that sheds some light on these questions: “According to a paper released last week by the National Bureau of Economic Research, first-year college students who are assigned roommates with video-game consoles study 40 minutes less per day, on average, than first-year students whose roommates did not bring consoles.
And that reduction in study time has a sizable effect on grades: First-year students whose roommates brought video-game consoles earned grades that were 0.241 lower, on a 4-point scale, than did equivalent students whose roommates did not have consoles.”
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malik says on March 21st, 2009 at 5:16 am
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