blog by zahra

Surprisingly, it wasn’t too difficult for me to get back into study mode after the break!  Hope you had the same ease of becoming textbook savvy again! (did I just imply that we shouldn’t have studied over the break? *cough, cough*)

Since yesterday, my professors have welcomed us back with are our midterm grades and the schedules for exam viewing.  Whether you are able to keep your midterm with you, or if you are only allowed to see it under your professor/TA’s supervision, it’s super important to go back and review your midterm, and really understand why and how you lost marks.  To me, there are 3 reasons why one wouldn’t go to review their exam:

1) “I got above class average”: So what?  Don’t get me wrong here, even I am motivated to do well on my exams by perceiving that I’m just a little smarter than most of my peers.  But just because you got above class average, it doesn’t mean that you did the best you could.  Don’t settle for “good enough”.

2) “The final exam is non-cumulative”: I’m sure you can still hear your class breathing a collective sigh of relief on the first day of class when the professor announced this uber-awesome thing.  BUT…just because the exam isn’t cumulative, it doesn’t mean that you’re not expected to understand concepts from the first part of the course.  Of course, the final exam will not directly test you on previous material, but you will be expected to know terminology and big ideas from the first half of the course.  Think about it in terms of your future career…whether it be medicine, dentistry, law, teaching, your success will always depend on cumulative knowledge.  I certainly don’t want to go to an ear, nose, and throat specialist who pokes me in the eye because he couldn’t be bothered to remember anatomy outside of his specialty.

3) “I did SUPER well (A+)!”: Congrats!  I have my personal rule-of-thumb for this one: if you aren’t allowed to keep the exam and the viewing time fits your schedule, go to see you exam.  There is always room for improvement.  If the exam is yours to keep, definitely look over it.  Personally, there tends to be at least 1 question that I wasn’t 100% sure about during the exam.  If I miraculously got it right, I’ll still review the concept and go through examples to make sure that I’m fully confident to tackle a similar exam question.

Remember, be proactive!  You’re paying for your education and you shouldn’t settle for being an average student. 🙂