Cause I don’t feel alive right now, I feel like I’m mindlessly floating in a pile of work. Like studying is breathing now, I feel like I do it all the time! I already knew that taking 36 credits with a majority being science courses wouldn’t be easy. No one was lying when they said UBC is tough, it is. A friend of mine had a midterm last friday! How quick is that? That means if you gave yourself enough time to study you’d be studying for a midterm just 2 weeks into school. How crazy is that? A lot of people on my floor are Arts..so I don’t feel like they understand the stress that is Science/Engineering/etc… All of the arts students I talk to are always done there work, HOW? How is it possible? Do they have an amazing time management schedule or do they just have a minimal amount of work? If its the time management schedule then I want it! I think what also probably contributes to it is that is there schedules have so much space, there not stacked with classes, so therefore more time to study, and finish work. Some nights I’m like.. I need to switch to Arts, but then I cant imagine myself doing anything but science. I mean my easiest course this semester would be English, yet its also the least tolerable, if that makes any sense.
Midterms are stressing me out..It’s horrible how close they are to eachother, and having 2+ at the same day is pure cruelty. Here are the midterms I have coming up:
Bio 121: midterm October 4
Calc(math180): midterm October 5
Eng110 : inclass essay(midterm1) October 7
Physics 101: midterm1 October 7
Chem 121 : midterm October 12
I dont know how it works at UBC but if the teachers assign a lot of work during that week of a somewhat “midterm season” then i might crawl into a hole. Things move ridiculously fast, and its hard to keep up. I’ve managed to keep on top of things as of now I have a 99%+ in all my classes, but thats based solely on quizzes, watch it drop when midterms come along :[, but there have been some fumbles along the way so far(switching schedule around and playing catch up x.x, missing a physics lab(oops thought it was every OTHER week, im making it up though wheew! And just other small stuff)! I know I’m reaching for the stars especially with a course load like mine..but I want a 80-85%+ average this semester. No I need one! I’ve got little post it notes on my room with motivational notes. Right now I just hope to live through midterm season.
Haha, while I do admit that science and especially engineering students have a lot of homework, and a lot of class time….we Artsies have got to write all the essays! I have four essays due within three days. In fact, I’m writing one right now.
I find the reason why midterm week/s are so terrible is not because of the exams. It’s terrible because we still have to catch up on readings and other homework at the same time as studying. Final Exam week is fine for me because we get school off!
OMFG 36 credits!?!?! Are you okay?
Are you planning to do honours or something?
As for the midterms, I think all the profs in the faculty of science conspire to get all first year midterms in one week. And they plan to do that for the finals.
JUST JOKING! good luck though!
Its because Math 180 is 4 credits due to the workshop. I’m taking a one credit course thats not horrible eitjer. THEY ARE! I hear all these commerce kids dont have midterms for another 2 weeks, and most of mine are all next week. craziness
I totally feel your pain. Same midterms as you, except I’m taking Math 104. SIGH.
yeah i switched out of math 104, cant do econ anything related to save my life.
Glad to see you have motivation! That was the one thing I lacked in first year (and this year too to a degree) and it really brought me down.
My most controversial blog touches on the topic of your envy of arts students: https://blogs.ubc.ca/morgan/2009/09/21/the-stereotypical-arts-student/ and I definitely know what you mean. I was also thinking about switching, but I just couldn’t. Plus, I’m a science person, and a science person like me doesn’t have an arts brain and would struggle and spend more time on work in arts than in science.
Your grades are meaningless until you have a midterm. Then you know exactly where you stand and how you’re doing in the class. Until then you have to hope that you’re understanding everything in the way it will be tested (like for PHYS 101, understanding the concepts isn’t enough). Anyways, you seem to be doing great so far, keep it up 😀
Yes, you are more than alive. Yes, you definitely will live through the midterm season and beyond! 😀
(Maybe you’d like to try dedicating three hours studying for each subject per day for at least ten days before the exams… see how it goes.)
I would loovee to do that, but I end classes most days at 5. Leaving me till 6 if I eat, and then with 5 classes i’d like to study for that’d be 15 hours, going well into the next day lol.
I guess this is where setting our priories straight comes in!
On the above comment, that’s an insane amount of studying in my opinion. It’s also near impossible to accomplish for a science student with a full course load who is also trying to maintain an appropriate amount of sleep each night.
At least, that’s what I’ve observed. In first and second year I would leave my house at or before 6am, and then arrive home 12-17 hours later. After factoring in dinner, that left ~1 hour to study per day. Even now that I’m living on residence, and now that my midterm course load has dropped (one of my courses is a seminar and one is a directed studies, so I only have 4 lecture courses this term), I wouldn’t be able to put in 3 hours a day per course… …even if I was 100% efficient with my time (studying on the 10 minute breaks between classes, etc).
I stumbled along this blog and have been reading- would love to hear where you ended up!! Did you go to medical school