The Spring test is some kind of “preparation” for the final exams in May/June. A “taster”, where we can get to know what kind of problems to expect, how to deal with exam stress, how to use the calculator… It counts 5% in the end of year mark, which is lower than the Matlab test (6%). That’s where things went wrong…
Not every subject is “spring test subject”, only Fluid Mechanics, Properties of Matter, Mathematics, Thermodynamics and Process Analysis. And even from these, not every lecture is “spring test material”, just the previously specified ones… And we were told that we shouldn’t worry, it’s an easy test, we should spend about a week on revision, that is more than enough. Well…
The problems started when I realised I didn’t know where to start. I made this amazing list about the lecture notes I should re-read:
… and I started to re-read them. As I already mentioned in a previous post, I don’t really know how to study, so this re-reading was not very effective. I made some notes and I felt I understood the material. But then came the shock: I tried to solve a Spring test past paper. And I couldn’t answer a single question on it… Of course, this is a normal thing, you just need more revision and it’ll be fine, right? Except that the test was on Friday, and I realised I need more revision on Thursday at 3pm…
So I spent the rest of my Thursday desperately trying to figure out how to quickly squeeze as much knowledge as possible into my poor little brain… I made a few summary sheets, because I love colours and I love summaries, but they were just hopeless attempts to save the day.
The next day I woke up very early, and I went through a past paper for some final bits of information… And then at 10am I went into the room knowing full well that I would fail this exam. In the morning we had 3 hours for 3 subjects, and then another 3 hours in the afternoon for the remaining 2.
I don’t know the results, and I didn’t want to discuss my performance with my classmates, so I will wait and see what the markers think about my “work”. But I know that I am satisfied with only one out of the 5 subjects, and you can imagine what that means in terms of marks…
To sum up, I was too light-minded. I thought 5% is just not worth revising that much. And then, when it hit me that I should’ve studied much more (because there is always this “moment” when it hits you, sooner or later…) it was already too late. I made a mistake which I hope I won’t make again and the only good thing is that it was “just” the spring test, not the actual summer exams. I’ve written about the emails we get if we do particularly well on an exam, but there is this other type of email, too, for those who did particularly badly… And it’s just a matter of time when I will get a notification from the Outlook app about an email with the subject “Spring test results – you have an urgent appointment with the director of course operations”…
So, what have I learnt from this?
1. Don’t wait till the very last minute with revision. Take a deep breath and stop procrastinating.
2. Focus on what will be asked on the exam. Start with doing a past paper.
3. After you messed up, don’t expect others to understand. It was all your fault…
And what’s the good news? (Because everything should end with some positive thoughts…)
We got an email yesterday with a nice little Excel containing the summer exam timetable.
Let’s try this revision thing again, this time for 73% of the year!
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
